1 Tools for Commercial Component Assembly Francis Bordeleau, Zeligsoft/Carleton University Mark Vigder, National Research Council Canada

2 Context: Component-Based Distributed Applications Application Engineer Target-independent Component Assembly Implementations A2 A6 A5 A3 A4 A1 Platform 1 Node1Node2 Deployment 1 Platform 2 Node2 Node1 Node4 Deployment 3 Node3 Node1 Node2 Deployment 2 Application C1 C3 C4 C2 A1 A6 A5 A3 A2 A6 A5 A3 A1 A4 A5 A3 A1 A4 A5 A3 A2 A6 A5 A3 A1 A6 A5 A3

3 Roles for Component-Based Application Engineering Application Engineer (COTS Component) Target-independent Component Assembly Implementations A2 A6 A5 A3 A4 A1 Platform 1 Node1Node2 Deployment 1 Platform 2 Node2 Node1 Node4 Deployment 3 Node3 Node1 Node2 Deployment 2 C1 C3 C4 C2 A1 A6 A5 A3 A2 A6 A5 A3 A1 A4 A5 A3 A1 A4 A5 A3 A2 A6 A5 A3 A1 A6 A5 A3 COTS Component Implementer Application Deployer

4 Component elements C1 C3 C4 C2 Components consist of: Interface – Inputs, outputs, ports, attributes Configuration options – Local tailoring Provided by COTS component implementer: Implementation(s) – One or more implementations per component, possibly from different vendors Deployment requirements/constraints – Platform, environment, etc. Implementations A6 A5 A3 A4 A2 A1

5 COTS Component Market Requirements Developing a viable COTS component market requires two key aspects to be addressed: 1.Component Industry agreed interfaces (APIs, protocols, configurations) Industry standards for describing components and component artefacts 2.Deployment framework Infrastructure services Management of deployment, runtime components, etc. Industry standards for describing platforms Descriptor files required for: Application/component Deployment platform Deployment plan

6 Problem: Descriptor Generation Application Engineer Component-Based Application Application C1 C3 C4 C2 Descriptor Files (XML) Conventional UML tools VISIO Manual Labor intensive Error prone Validation ?

7 Currently To build a new application, an Application Engineer must: Assemble and configure components Validate component configurations and assemblies Create the descriptor files to deploy Validate the descriptor files Issues The work is very labor intensive and error prone It requires highly-skilled engineers As the number of components and application complexity increase, application maintenance will become extremely difficult and costly

8 Solution: Automatic generation and validation Application Engineer Component-Based Application Application C1 C3 C4 C2 Descriptor Files (XML) Validation? Automated

9 Industry Standards Deployment and Configuration Standards are defined within the context of a component framework: J2EE and.NET CORBA Component Model OMG Deployment and Configuration Standard Domain specific standards Software Defined Radio (SCA) Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR)

10 Questions Technical issues? Definition of concrete deployment platforms Appropriate Deployment and Configuration standards Business issues? Industry buy-in Standards processes Development approaches? UML and MDA Tool support