UnSCom: A Standardized Framework for the Specification of Software Components

Abstract

This paper proposes a standardized framework for the specification of components, which focuses on providing the information necessary to facilitate component development, discovery, and composition. To be applicable in all these fields, the Unified Specification of Components (UnSCom) framework ties together a mix of different specification aspects and unifies the specification of components using a single, coherent approach. The framework is based on the notion of design by contract which it extends to component-based software engineering by introducing service and composition contracts. It supports the specification of composition contracts, which describe the required and provided interfaces of components on various contract levels. These contract levels are thematically grouped into colored pages: white pages contain general and commercial information, yellow pages comprise component classifications, blue pages describe the required and provided functionality, green pages comprise the architectural design of the required and provided interfaces, and grey pages describe the required and provided quality. © Springer-Verlag 2004.