Promoting Component Reuse by Separating Transmission Policy from Implementation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a methodology and tools that enable flexible separation of transmission policies from component implementation, enhancing software reuse in distributed applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to decouple transmission policies from component design, allowing dynamic and fine-grained control over inter-address-space parameter passing.

Findings

Enables independent decision of transmission semantics from component implementation.

Supports dynamic, per-class, per-method, or per-parameter transmission policies.

Promotes greater software reuse in distributed component-based applications.

Abstract

In this paper we present a methodology and set of tools which assist the construction of applications from components, by separating the issues of transmission policy from component definition and implementation. This promotes a greater degree of software reuse than is possible using traditional middleware environments. Whilst component technologies are usually presented as a mechanism for promoting reuse, reuse is often limited due to design choices that permeate component implementation. The programmer has no direct control over inter-address-space parameter passing semantics: it is fixed by the distributed application's structure, based on the remote accessibility of the components. Using traditional middleware tools and environments, the application designer may be forced to use an unnatural encoding of application level semantics since application parameter passing semantics are tightly coupled with the component deployment topology. This paper describes how inter-address-space parameter passing semantics may be decided independently of component implementation. Transmission policy may be dynamically defined on a per-class, per-method or per-parameter basis.