Abstract
An emerging trend in the engineering of complex systems is the use of component integration frameworks. Such a framework prescribes an architectural design that permits flexible composition of third-party components into applications. A good example is Sun Microsystems' Enterprise JavaBeans™ (EJB) framework, which supports object-oriented, distributed, enterprise-level applications, such as account management systems. One problem with frameworks like EJB is that they are documented informally, making it difficult to understand precisely what is provided by the framework, and what is required to use it. We believe formal specification can help, and in this paper show how a formal architectural description language can be used to describe and provide insight into such frameworks.
Highlights
Component integration frameworks1 are becoming increasingly important for commercial software systems
In our own previous work we looked at the High Level Architecture (HLA) for Distributed Simulation [AGI98]
One of the most important and prevalent classes of software systems are those that support business information applications, such as accounting systems and inventory tracking systems. Today these systems are usually structured as multi-tiered client-server systems, in which business-processing software provides services to client programs, and in turn relies on lower level information management services, such as for transactions, persistence, and security. (See Figure 1.)
Summary
Component integration frameworks are becoming increasingly important for commercial software systems. A framework defines three things: (a) the overall structure of an application in terms of its major types of constituent components; (b) a set of interface standards that describe what capabilities are required of those components; and (c) reusable infrastructure that supports the integration of. Those components through shared services and communication channels. APIs are formal to the extent that they provide precise descriptions of those services – usually as a set of signatures, possibly annotated with informal preand post-conditions These techniques, while illustrated in terms of EJB, shed light more generally on ways to provide formal architectural models of object-oriented frameworks
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