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CCDL: the composable components description language

  • Special Section on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering
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Abstract

Tools that automate component composition decisions need as inputs formal descriptions of following categories: the functional and nonfunctional requirements desired for the target, the structural constraints for the target, and the contractual specifications of available individual components. In this article we present CCDL, a description language able to cover these three aforementioned categories.We define a composable component as an architectural entity described by an external contractual specification and a set of structural constraints for its variable internal configuration. The internal configuration of a composable component is not fixed, but is a target that must be composed from available components. This composition is driven by external requirements while complying with the fixed structural constraints. Such hierarchically composable components permit finetuned customization of component-based systems with a high degree of unanticipated variability. Our composition approach is architectural style specific and addresses multiflow architectures.The most important strength of CCDL is its ability to describe structural constraints of composable components (that represent composition targets), as flexible guidelines for their composition. The CCDL descriptions can be used by automatic composition tools that implement requirements driven compositions strategies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Bd. V. Parvan 2, 300223, Timisoara, Romania

    Ioana Şora

  2. Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Pierre Verbaeten & Yolande Berbers

Authors
  1. Ioana Şora
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  2. Pierre Verbaeten
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  3. Yolande Berbers
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Correspondence to Ioana Şora.

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Şora, I., Verbaeten, P. & Berbers, Y. CCDL: the composable components description language. Int J Softw Tools Technol Transfer 9, 155–168 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-006-0017-7

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