Component-based programming of distributed applications

Abstract

The software architecture research domain arose in the early 90s and seeks solutions for easing the development of large, complex, software systems based on the abstract description of their software architectures. This research field is quite recent and there still does not exist a consensus on what should be the description of a software architecture. However, guidelines are already provided. In particular, it is now accepted that an architecture definition decomposes into three types of elements: component, connector, and configuration, which respectively correspond to a computation unit, an interaction unit and an architecture. It is also admitted that the description of an architecture should rely on a well-defined set of notations, generically referred to as architecture description languages. This document gives an overview of the capabilities offered by development environments based on the architecture paradigm. In a first step, we examine basic features of architecture description languages, which may be seen as their common denominator although existing languages already differ from that standpoint. We then concentrate on two specific environments, developed by members of the Broadcast working group, which aim at easing the implementation of distributed applications out of existing components. The Aster environment from the Solidor group at Inria-Irisa provides means for the systematic synthesis of middleware from non-functional requirements of applications. The Olan environment from the Sirac group at Inria-Grenoble offers support for the deployment of distributed applications composed of heterogeneous software elements. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000.