Towards a Periodic Table of Connectors (original) (raw)
The software architecture of a system de nes its high level structure, exposing its gross organization as a collection of interacting components. Connectors are the glue for combining components and are a critical aspect of architectural design. Thus it is important t o c o nsider connectors as rst class entities and provide simple, yet abstract descriptions of them. Although many formalisms model connectors explicitly, their descriptions are given in an operational manner capturing low l e v el properties that usually only model communication patterns. If connectors could be characterized by means of high level properties, descriptions would be much more declarative and adequate for architectural analysis. Moreover, if these high level properties were thought o f a s primitives, a systematic analysis of connectors could be done. A canonical set of primitives would provide a framework for comparing, re ning and reusing connectors. Consider two connectors characterized in terms of primitive properties, if a common subset of properties exists, a new type of connector could be factorized. On the other hand, if there is no property that allows both connectors to be di erentiated, then the existing set of canonical properties must be re ned. Finally, s u c h a framework allows connector universe exploration, by c o n triving connectors as new combinations of properties. In this paper we d e v elop a framework for connector modeling following these ideas and put forward a rst sketch of primitive connector properties. We also show h o w this framework can be used to de ne operations and reason about connectors.
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