Component Generation Technology for Semantic Tool Integration 1 Gabor Karsai and Jeff Gray Institute for Software Integrated Systems Vanderbilt University {gabor,

Motivating Problem: Tool Integration Problem Description Previous Approaches –File Translators, Middleware, Universal Language, PCTE Increased complexity and semantic richness requires semantic translation The core of our solution involves software generators that offer a componentized solution to the tool integration problem

Integrated Data Model MM LRU FR FDE LRUVAR OBS UNIT MSG ALR

Evaluating Tool Integration Solutions How much time and effort does it cost to integrate a new tool? How scalable is the integration approach? How much expert knowledge is needed to realize an integration solution? What is the coupling between the individual tools and the integration technology?

Tool Integration Framework (TIF) IMS models can be viewed in a web browser New tools can access the IMS directly through the CMI Legacy tools require a bi-directional tool adapter The CMI is specified in CORBA IDL and defines rules and data structures for accessing the IMS MS Repository sits on top of an ODBC database; currently Access or SQL Server CORBA

Entity_2 Top_Model Entity_1Component 1 * Tool Specification paradigm Foo; model Top_Model {... part Component components; } model Component {... part Entity_1 ent_1; part Entity_2 ent_2; part Component subComponents; rel Rel aRel } entity Entity_1 {... } entity Entity_2 {... } relation Rel { Entity_1 src 1 Entity_2 dst *; }

Creating a Semantic Translator INTEGRATED MODEL DATABASE Model Instance Data Reusable Component Database Scaffolding Hand-coded Component CMI Scaffolding Generated Component Tool Meta Data Constraint Enforcer Repository Interface GEN Tool XLG Tool DBB Tool UP Translator DOWN Translator Tool Data Model(MSF/UML) IMS Data Model(MSF/UML) Translation Model Traversals and C++

Structured Specification of Translators visitor Visitor { at Component[...] > traverse[...]; at Entity_1[...] >; at Entity_2[...] >; at Rel[...] traverse[...]; } traversal Traversal using Visitor { from Top_Model ->[…] > to { components[...] } >; from Component[...] to { entity_1[...], entity_2[...], subComponents[...], rel[...] }; from Rel[...] > to {src[...], dst[...] } >; }

The Process (Semantic Translators) Customer/Developers Create tool model specification Tool.msf Developers Create semantic translator specification Tool2IMS spec Generate semantic translator IMS.msf Semantic Translator Process is repeated for IMS2Tool translator Represents the underlying IMS model schema; Assume to be created previously; May require modification Pluggable server component Representation of tool using our model specification notation

Creating a Tool Adapter TOOL DATABASE Model Instance Data Reusable Component CMI/CORBA Tool Adapter Main Code CMI Scaffolding Generated Component Tool Meta Data Scaffolding TAG Tool Tool Data Model(MSF/UML) Support utility classes Hand-coded Component

The Process (Tool Adapters) Tool.msf Create Tool Adapter Developers Tool Adapter Tool Adapter Generator Tool_taf.cpp Wrapper for CMI data structures TAF Common reusable code

IMS Browser (Instance Data)

Development Effort Translators can be written within a few man-days –Average translator was 225 lines of traversal/visitor code Tool Adapter development depends on: –Complexity of tool –Complexity of the tool’s data access mechanism (e.g., ADO, COM, comma separated values) –Developer experience with previous Tool Adapters Our average development time for a bi-directional Tool Adapter is about 10 man-weeks

Lessons Learned Successful integration of 4 tools Separation of concerns: –Cleaner solution by separating semantic and syntactic issues Framework approach using software generators –infrastructural elements –tool-specific translators (componentized) –traversal/visitor specification language

Future enhancements Incremental translation (fine-grain operations) Intelligent data fusion (merge) Web-based access to IMS (XML server) Automatic generation of integrated schema from the individual tool specifications