Exploiting architectural style to develop a family of applications

Abstract

Reuse of large-grain software components offers the potential for significant savings in application development cost and time. Successful reuse of components and component substitutability depends both on qualities of the components reused as well as the software context in which the reuse is attempted. Disciplined approaches to the structure and design of software applications offers the potential of providing a hospitable setting for such reuse. We present the results of a series of exercises designed to determine how well "off-the-shelf" constraint solvers could be reused in applications designed in accordance with the C2 software architectural style. The exercises involved the reuse of SkyBlue and Amulet's one-way formula constraint solver. We constructed numerous variations of a single application (thus an application family). The paper summarizes the style and presents the results from the exercises. The exercises were successful in a variety of dimensions; one conclusion is that the C2 style offers significant potential for the development of application families and that wider trials are warranted. 1 Index Terms-architectural styles, message-based architectures, application families, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), constraint management, component-based development.

Software Connectors and Refinement in Family Architectures

“…We have also studied the role of complex connectors in simplifying component integration and generating designs [1] and implementations [26]. The techniques used in this paper extend our previous work in the area of product line architectures [24]. This work is still in progress and it will evolve in several directions, including refining of our taxonomy of connectors, providing automated support for creating family designs, and resolving mismatches among architectural and design views at the level of a product family.…”

“…pipe and filter [19], real-time data feeds [20], event-driven architecture [21], message-based style [22], middleware-induced styles [23], and push-based systems [11]. Architectural styles are an important mechanism for enabling reuse in family architectures [11,24], indicating that software connectors have a major role to play in enabling architecture-based reuse.…”

A language and environment for architecture-based software development and evolution

“…The concepts of component subtyping and type checking of architectures were initially motivated by specific problems encountered in exploring architecture-based development of distributed applications and OTS reuse in the context of the C2 style [18,22,371. We have since developed a deeper understanding of many of the relevant ideas, including the formal underpinnings of the type theory [21].…”

“…Each of them may evolve. Our work to date has addressed the evolution of connectors and topologies [19,22,29,371. This paper discusses an approach for evolving software components, which has resulted from the recognition that an existing software module can evolve in a controlled manner via subtyping, as in object-oriente(d languages (OOPLs), for example.…”

Model-driven design of Industrial Control Systems

“…In MDD, models are used in most system development activities, i.e., models serve as input and output at all stages of system development until the final system is itself generated [4], [5], [6]. Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) is a relatively new software engineering approach that has been proven to be very powerful in the design of software intensive systems [7], [8], [9], [10]. This paper presents a Component Based Approach as applied to Industrial Control Systems, using the basic concepts of CBSE for defining the role of component and connector that allows defining an industrial control system.…”