A Coordination Perspective: Main Page

A Coordination Perspective on Software Architecture:

Towards a Design Handbook for Integrating Software Components

Chrysanthos Nicholas Dellarocas

Table of Contents

1.1 Motivation
1.2 Research Overview
1.2.1 Objectives
1.2.2 Theoretical Argument
1.2.3 Deliverables
1.2.4 Validation
1.3 Related Work
1.4 Organization of the Thesis

2 Component Interdependencies Deserve First-Class Status
2.1 Software Applications are Interdependent Sets of Activities
2.2 Implementation Languages Focus on Components
2.3 Implicit Interconnection Assumptions Pose Obstacles to Component Reuse
2.3.1 A Taxonomy of Interconnection Assumptions
2.3.2 Difficulties in Identifying Component Assumptions
2.3.3 Difficulties in Determining New Patterns of Interaction
2.3.4 Difficulties in Replacing or Mediating Component Assumptions
2.4 Component Interdependencies Deserve First-Class Status
2.4.1 Requirements for Separating Interconnection from Implementation
2.4.1.1 Make component assumptions explicit
2.4.1.2 Separate and localize representations of component interdependencies
2.4.1.3 Develop systematic design guidelines for component interconnection
2.4.2 Benefits from Separating Interconnection from Implementation
2.4.2.1 Benefits to initial application development
2.4.2.2 Benefits to application maintenance
2.5 The Way Ahead
3 Synopsis: A Software Architecture Description Language
3.1 Language Design Objectives
3.1.1 Representation of Application Architecture
3.1.2 Transformation of Application ArchitecturesError!
3.1.3 Support for Compatibility Checking
3.2 Language Overview
3.3 Language Elements
3.3.1 Activities
3.3.1.1 Activity decompositions
3.3.1.2 Component descriptions
3.3.2 Dependencies
3.3.2.1 Dependency decompositions
3.3.2.2 Coordination processes
3.3.2.3 Software connectors
3.3.3 Ports
3.3.3.1 Atomic ports
3.3.3.2 Composite ports
3.3.4 Resources
3.3.5 Attributes
3.3.6 Wires
3.4 Checking Element Compatibility
3.4.1 Using Attributes to Encode Constraints
3.4.2 The Dual Purpose of Attribute Matching
3.5 Entity Specialization
3.5.1 Creating New Elements
3.5.2 Specializing Activities
3.5.3 Specializing Dependencies
3.6 The Way Ahead
4 Towards a Design Handbook for Integrating Software Components
4.1 Motivation
4.2 Overview of the Dependencies Space
4.3 The Concept of a Design Space
4.4 A Taxonomy of Resources
4.4.1 Resource Kind
4.4.2 Resource Access
4.4.3 Resource Transportability
4.4.4 Resource Sharing
4.5 A Generic Model of Resource Flows
4.5.1 Usability Dependencies
4.5.1.1 Types of usability dependencies
4.5.1.2 Managing usability dependencies
4.5.2 Accessibility Dependencies
4.5.2.1 Types of accessibility dependencies
4.5.2.2 Managing accessibility dependencies
4.5.3 Prerequisite Dependencies
4.5.3.1 Types of prerequisite dependencies
4.5.3.2 Managing prerequisite dependencies
4.5.4 Sharing Dependencies
4.5.4.1 Types of sharing dependencies
4.5.4.2 Managing sharing dependencies
4.5.5 Putting it all together: Flow dependencies
4.6 Special Cases of Flow Dependencies
4.6.1 Control Flows
4.6.1.1 Specialization of the generic process
4.6.1.2 Managing control flow dependencies
4.6.2 Data Flows
4.6.2.1 Specialization of the generic model
4.6.2.2 Managing data flow dependencies
4.6.3 Named Resource Flows
4.6.4 Existing Resource Dependencies
4.7 Timing Dependencies
4.7.1 Mutual Exclusion Dependencies (X, Y Mutex)
4.7.2 Prerequisite Dependencies (X Prereq Y)
4.7.3 Prevention Dependencies (X Prevents Y)
4.7.4 Meets Dependencies (X Meets Y)
4.7.5 Overlap Dependencies (X Overlaps Y)
4.7.6 During Dependencies (X During Y)
4.7.7 Starts Dependency (X Starts Y)
4.7.8 Simultaneity Dependency (X,Y simstart)
4.7.9 Finishes Dependency (X Finishes Y)
4.7.10 Simultaneous End Dependency (X, Y Simend)
4.8 Composite Dependencies
4.8.1 Exchange Dependencies
4.8.2 Multiple Unidirectional Flows
4.8.3 Arbitrary Static Flow Patterns
4.8.4 Circular Flows
4.9 The Way Ahead
5 transforming Software Architectures into Executable Applications
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Constructing and Transforming Architectural Diagrams
5.2.1 Constructing Application Architecture Diagrams
5.2.2 Specializing Generic Activities
5.2.3 Specializing Generic Dependencies
5.2.4 Integrating Executable Design Elements into Code Modules
5.3 An Algorithm for Integrating Activities and Dependencies
5.4 Generating an Example Application
Stage 1: Decouple interface dependencies
Stage 2: Specialize generic elements
Stage 3: Connect all modules to control
Stage 4: Generate code
5.5 The Way Ahead
6 Implementation and Experience
6.1 Synthesis: A Component-based Software Application Developm Environment
6.1.1 Implementation Overview
6.1.2 Synopsis Language Editors
6.1.3 Entity Repositories
6.1.4 Design Assistant
6.1.5 Code Generation
6.2 Experiment 1: A File Viewer Application
6.2.1 Introduction and Objectives
6.2.2 Description of the Experiment
6.2.3 Discussion
6.3 Experiment 2: Key Word In Context
6.3.1 Introduction and Objectives
6.3.2 Description of the Experiment
6.3.3 Discussion
6.4 Experiment 3: An Interactive TEX-based Document Typesetting System
6.4.1 Introduction and Objectives
6.4.2 Description of the Experiment
6.4.3 Discussion
6.5 Experiment 4: A Collaborative Editor Toolkit
6.5.1 Introduction and Objectives
6.5.2 Description of the Experiment
6.5.2.1 Description of the collaboration protocol
6.5.2.2 A Synopsis architecture for collaborative editing
6.5.2.3 Generating executable implementations
6.5.3 Discussion
6.6 Summary and Conclusions
7 Related Work
7.1 Software Architecture
7.1.1 Languages for Architectural Description
7.1.2 Architectural Taxonomies and Handbooks
7.1.3 Domain-Specific Software Architectures
7.2 Coordination Theory
7.3 Other Approaches for Component Software Development
7.3.1 Module Interconnection Languages
7.3.2 Open Software Architectures
7.3.3 Software Schemas
7.3.4 Reusability through Program Transformation
7.4 Other Related Areas
7.4.1 Theory of Operating, Concurrent, and Distributed Systems
7.4.2 CASE Tools
8 Conclusion
8.1 Summary of Results
8.2 Design Lessons
8.3 Future Work
8.3.1 Synopsis Architectural Language
8.3.2 Coordination Process Design Space
8.3.3 Synthesis Design Assistant
8.3.4 New Component Programming Languages
8.4 Conclusiona Synthesis Coordination Code Listing
Appendix
A.1 Experiment 1: A Simple File Viewer
Implementation 1: Data Transfer using DDE
Implementation 2: Data transfer using a shared file and semaphore synchronization
A.2 Experiment 2: Key Word In Context
Implementation 1: Filter components interconnected using pipes
Implementation 2: Filter components organized in main program-subroutine architecture
Implementation 3: Filter components organized in implicit invocation architecture
Implementation 4: Server components interconnected using pipes
Implementation 5: Server components organized in main program-subroutine architecture
Implementation 6: Server components organized in implicit invocation architecture
Implementation 7: Mixed components interconnected using pipes
Implementation 8: Mixed components organized in main program-subroutine architecture
Implementation 9: Mixed components organized in implicit invocation architecture
A.3 Experiment 3: Interactive TEX System
A.4 Experiment 4: A Collaborative Editor Toolkit
Addendum
Benefits to initial application development
Benefits to application maintenance
References