Software Architecture or Component Frameworks?

1
Software Architecture orComponent Frameworks?

• Alexander L. Wolf
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• http//www.cs.colorado.edu/users/alw/

2
What Have You Done for Me Lately?

• Software architecture
• prototype formal notations
• prototype design environments
• assessment practices

• Component frameworks
• inherently support distributed systems
• compatible with popular OO methods
• supported by commercial products

• The charitable view
• Component frameworks support only a specific
  architecture
• Software architecture technology seeks to be
  general

3
Component Frameworks are Here Today
From Experience with Software Architectures and
Configured Software Descriptions by Walt
Scacchi, University of California, IrvineJames
S. Choi, California State University, Fullerton
4
Architecture vs. Component Frameworks

• Reduced risk?
• Predictability of scalability, reliability,
  deployability, maintainability?
• Skill value?
• Market interest?

5
One Attempt at Relating the Two
Architectural Style
Architectural Style?
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Comp
Connector
Connector
Connector
Middleware
Middleware 1
Middleware 2
OS Network
OS N
OS N
OS Network
OS Network
OS N
Process Boundaries
Process Boundaries
From The Role of Middleware in Software
Architectures by Eric Dashofy, University of
California, Irvine
6
Some Challenge Problems

• Capturing and supporting a component framework as
  an architectural style
• Modeling and analyzing component frameworks as
  software architectures
• Providing a rigorous method to choose among
  alternative component frameworks (as
  architectures, not as products)
• Showing how to integrate some software
  architecture technology into an existing
  component framework support system

7
(No Transcript)