Development based on software architecture is one of the most promising methods for improving software quality, reducing software cost and raising software prod uctivity. Viewing architecture elements as first-class entities, the authors pr esent a specification method based on framework and role type to alleviate the p roblems that conventional methods may bring, and define a specification language FRADL (framework and role-type based architecture description language) in thi s paper. In FRADL, framework is considered as a component and role type with act ive connecting faculty is defined as a connector. The instances of components an d connectors are configured to compose the architecture for a family of software systems.