Enhanced component interfaces to support dynamic adaption and extension
Ralf Reussner · 2005
Current component systems offer the possibility to integrate different enterprise systems, e.g., by wrapping legacy components or integrating several object protocols such as RMI, Corba-IIOP, etc. A disadvantage of todays component systems is that the interface descriptions of their component model do not give alone sufficient information to deploy a component correctly and reliably. Therefore the definition of new interface models, which are enhanced by (semantic) applicability information play an important role in enterprise application integration. We describe a new model of software component interfaces, using an extension of finite state machines to describe the protocol to use a component's offered services, and the sequences of calls to external services the component requires to fulfil its offered services. Our model concentrates on protocol issues of interoperability. We present a description of our new interface model and present the algorithms for integration checking, automatic adaption and dynamic extension. These algorithms are implemented in our CoCoNut/J-prototype.