ESF: the Software Bus [software engineering environment]

The Eureka Software Factory project, ESF, is a large scale project concerned with creating a class of software engineering environments which support the industrialised production of software. An ESF environment is a distributed development support environment, and is distinguished from traditional data-centric software engineering environments by being communications-oriented; it is called a Factory Support Environment, FSE. The communication amongst the application software in the FSE-the software tools and their constituent parts-takes place over a communications channel called the Software Bus. The objective of the Software Bus is the integration of these tools and parts with one another. This objective and its achievement is explained by expanding upon heterogeneity requirements upon the Software Bus; showing the position of the Software Bus within the structure of an FSE; giving the principles of coping with heterogeneity; and describing the languages and mechanisms of the Software Bus