Abstract :
The Software Bus supplies a solution to the problem of integrating heterogeneous, distributed software engineering tools in order that they can interoperate. The problems of heterogeneity of platform, paradigm, and programming language are described, together with the requirements not to rewrite legacy applications, to be descriptive, and to simply plug in and go. The structural view of a software engineering environment (SEE) as a set of components, offering and requiring services, mutually interacting by means of requests, and joined together by a Software Bus is given. The Software Bus performs any data conversion that is necessary, arranges for delivery of requests, and responds to errors. A prototype is publicly available. The Software Bus is compared with OSI transport layer/presentation layer, remote procedure calls, object request brokers, and broadcast message systems
Keywords :
computer aided software engineering; data conversion; distributed processing; integrated software; open systems; software tools; OSI presentation layer; OSI transport layer; Software Bus; broadcast message systems; components; data conversion; distributed SEE; distributed software engineering tools; error response; heterogeneous tools; inter-operation problems; legacy applications; object request brokers; programming language; publicly available prototype; remote procedure calls; requests; services; software engineering environment; Application software; Computer languages; Data conversion; Open systems; Plugs; Prototypes; Software engineering; Software performance; Software prototyping; Software tools;
