With the availability of fast network technology and powerful desktop computers, there is an increasing demand for the construction of reliable software that can exploit the parallel processing power of a network of computers. These typical distributed applications include those commonly found in telecommunication and banking industries. To support the simpler development of these complex software systems, robust middleware technologies such as CORBA, DCE and ActiveX/COM are becoming widely

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... oyed. Middleware provides a higher level programming interface for distributed software engineers, as the low-level networking details have been hidden. However, writing distributed software is still a complex task. Although the low-level distribution issues can be mostly ignored with the assistance of middleware, fundamental distributed system issues such as concurrency, synchronisation, dynamic process creation and deletion and re-configurable communication structures still need to be carefully considered. This thesis presents a novel software architecture design and verification methodology. Architects employ a pragmatic, graphical design method called Dynamic PARSE (PARSE-D) to design the software architecture. At the same time, they capture the concurrent and dynamic features of the system. Such dynamic features include the creation and deletion of processes and re-configurable communication links. Lastly, the correctness of the design can be verified, and possible design faults may be detected by using an automatic design analysis and verification tool called PARSE-DAT. CONCLUSIONS .