This article presents an extension of the Fractal component model targeted at programming applications to be run on computing grids: the Grid Component Model (GCM). First, to address the problem of deployment of components on the Grid, deployment strategies have been de ned. Then, as Grid applications often result from the composition of a lot of parallel (sometimes identical) components, composition mechanisms to support collective communications on a set of components are introduced. Finally, because of the constantly evolving environment and requirements for Grid applications, the GCM de nes a set of features intended to support component autonomicity. All these aspects are developed in this paper with the challenging objective to ease the programming of Grid applications, while allowing GCM components to also be the unit of deployment and management

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This paper presents a formal behavioural specification framework together with its applications in different contexts for specifying and verifying the correct behaviour of distributed Fractal components. Our framework allows us to build behavioural models for applications ranging from sequential Fractal components, to distributed objects, and finally distributed components. Our models are able to characterise both functional and non-functional behaviours, and the interaction between the two concerns.Finally, this work has resulted in the development of tools allowing the non-expert programmer to specify the behaviour of his components, and automatically, or semi-automatically verify properties of his application. Key-words:Behavioural Models, Transition Systems, Distributed Components, Hierarchical Components, Fractal, Verification, Verification Platform * INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, I3S, Univ. de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, CNRS, France, (first.last)@sophia.inria.fr Modèles comportementaux pour les systèmes de composants répartis FractalRésumé : Cet article présente un modèle formel pour la spécification comportementale, ainsi que son applicationà différents contextes, permettant de spécifier et de vérifier le comportement de composants répartisà la Fractal. Notre méthode permet de construire des modèles comportementaux pour des applications allant des composants Fractal sèquentiels, aux objets répartis, jusqu'aux composants répartis. Nos modèles sont capables de représenterà la fois les comportements fonctionnels et les aspects non-fonctionnels, ainsi que l'interaction entre les deux. Par ailleurs, ce travail a donné lieu au développement d'outils logiciels permettantà un utilisateur non-expert de spécifier le comportement de ses composants, et de vérifier, automatiquement ou semiautomatiquement, leurs propriètès. Mots-clés : Modèles comportementaux, Systèmes de transitions, Composants répartis, Composants hiérarchiques, Fractal, Vérification, Plateforme de vérification Behavioural Models for Distributed Fractal Components 3 I IntroductionComponent models provide a structured programming paradigm allowing a better re-usability of programs by the fact that both provided/required services and application structure are expressed statically in the composition. This takes even more importance as the structure of distributed components acts as an abstraction for the component distribution. However, this architectural description is not always sufficient. Indeed, in order to be able to safely compose "off the shelf" or even dynamically discovered components, a form of specification language is required. Such a specification can only rely on the existence of some well defined semantics for the underlying programming language or middleware.Among the existing component models, Fractal [10] provides the following crucial features: the explicit definition of provide/required interfaces for expressing dependencies between components; a hierarchical structure allowing to build components by composition of smaller component...