Download It is well known that software systems are continuously growing in

Aleksandar Dimov
Ph.D. student at Dept. for Distributed Systems and Networking,
Institute for Parallel Processing, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Models of Component-Based Software Architecture
It is well known that software systems are continuously growing in size and complexity. With
respect to this, it is important to develop methods for facilitation of software development and
this is the goal of the PhD research. One way to do this is to study the area of componentbased software engineering (CBSE). Main abstraction about is the software component which
enables the decomposition of the system into smaller parts. Although a promising approach,
there are a number of problems which prevents the successful penetration of CBSE into the
practice of software development. One way to alleviate these problems is to bring on focus
the combined research on CBSE and Software Architecture. Component-Based Software
Architecture considers the interconnections between components as first-class entities, called
connectors. The combination of the particular components and connectors into the
architecture is called a configuration. In order to be able to make different analyses of
architecture one should be able to reason about it in a formal way. Architecture Description
Languages specify formally the architecture at four abstraction levels.
Major task of this PhD study is to apply the theory of Generalized Nets (GNs) to describe
software architecture. In order to be able to consider GNs as an ADL, they are verified to
answer a list of requirements towards ADLs, also known as modeling aspects for components
and connectors. GNs are believed to be suitable for description of software architecture
because of their semantics that allows distinguishing between different kinds of information.
Moreover they have clear graphical notation and have ability to describe non-functional
requirements as reliability.
Another tasks of the PhD study is to improve the conditions for reusability of the elements
(components and connectors) of software architecture. With this respect a classification of
software wrappers is proposed – modules that adapt the component and isolate it from the rest
of the system. The classification has two levels; first one distinguishes wrappers according to
their main goals and the second one – according to the basic functions they implement to
realize these goals.