Service prototyping in the OVOPS environment
Panu Puro, Jarkko Sonninen · 1995
This paper will describe the OVOPS environment. The OVOPS environment is being developed by Telecom Finland and Lappeenranta University of Technology. It supports the design, implementation and debugging of distributed applications. Programs can be implemented operating system independently so that applications developed or embedded in the OVOPS environment can be ported to any system supporting OVOPS. OVOPS can be used as a platform for implementing intelligent network services. The idea of using OVOPS in service creation is that it provides a way to design and implement services in an object-oriented and modular way. It encourages implementing software in modules (tasks) and provides facilities for message-based programs. Provided facilities are, for example, a communication channel between tasks with messages, scheduling of tasks, a base class for a task, other useful classes and a user interface for debugging. Service creation is considered from a point of view of a programmer. OVOPS itself can be seen as a bottom-up approach for implementing message-based programs like intelligent network services. The bottom-up approach is good for fast prototyping and with it we can see the actual needs and problems of a service easily. A programmer may also affect the service implementation to make it more effective, which is usually impossible when high-level tools are used.