Abstract: Software requires continuing evolution to adapt complex environment and meet variable rectuirements. In order to analyze the process and rules of software evolution, we proposed a special graph grammar, delta-grammar to describe the evolution of software architecture(SA). In particular,we provided the production rules of insertion,removal,replacement, recombination, split and concurrency for depicting the evolution process more conveniently, intuitively and graphically. Finally, we showed the process and effect of applying delta-grammar to describe software architecture evolution by taking ccommerce information system for example.

Key words: Software evolution, Delta-grammar, Production rule