New insights on architectural connectors

Abstract

This work is a first step toward the reconciliation of the two main approaches to composition in system modeling, namely the categorical one and the algebraic one. In particular, we present a mapping from CommUnity, which uses the categorical approach based on colimits, into the Tile Model, which uses algebraic operators for composition. Our results include a standard decomposition for CommUnity programs. We also establish a strong link between the colimit computation of the categorical approach and the abstract semantics of configurations in the algebraic approach by proving that the encoding of a CommUnity diagram is behaviorally equivalent to the encoding of its colimit. © 2004 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.