FIRST: A Framework for Interoperable Resources, Services, and Tools.
Radu Prodan, John M. Kewley · 1999
This paper proposes an open objectoriented architecture called FIRST (Framework for Interoperable Resources, Services and Tools). This distributed software tool development framework addresses the key objectives of tool interoperability, portability and extensibility. A conforming tool can thus be used on a variety of platforms, presenting a consistent high-level view of its interactions with parallel (or distributed) programs and machines. Applications are dynamically instrumented with instructions at run-time and can therefore benefit from a variety of conforming software tools without need for recompilation. The major components and their principal interactions are described along with some examples of the different types of tool that can easily be produced with the framework. Keywords: CORBA, portability, dynamic instrumentation, software tools, interoperability, framework. 1 Introduction Despite the existence of many powerful tools supporting practical application engineering ...