PUTRACOM: A Concurrent Component Model With Exogenous Connectors

Abstract

In component-based development, composing components and controlling the interactions among them is not a trivial task. Mostly, the composition and interaction styles in the current state-of-the-art component-based models are port-to-port connection or method-call based. However, both styles confer complex patterns, since the number of interactions may increase dramatically due to the number of method calls, ports, and connectors. To avoid such complexity, a simple and coherent component model with adequate policies for control is required. In this paper, we provide a formal specification for components, composition, and interactions issuing in discrete-events and non-blocking component-based systems. Our concurrent component model called PUTRACOM is equipped with exogenous connectors as third-party objects for coordination and observable/observable unit as a part of components for invocation. These are used to achieve a truly separation between computation and control in order to reduce the complexity that arises in the port-to-port connection and method-call-based interaction styles. To formally specify our model, we have adopted communication sequential processes and reactive transition systems. The applicability of our model is evaluated using CoCoME case study. We demonstrate how PUTRACOM provides a mechanism to construct independent components and control the interactions between them by well-founded connectors.

Keywords

• Component-based development
• component interactions
• observer/observable pattern
• reactive transition systems (RTSs)