Modeling Dynamic Component Interfaces

TL;DR

This paper presents a model for dynamic component interfaces using UML-based diagrams, enabling detailed description and mapping of component structures and interfaces in object-oriented systems.

Contribution

It introduces component interface diagrams (CIDs) for modeling dynamic interfaces and demonstrates their application to a real framework, facilitating cross-technology mapping.

Findings

CIDs effectively describe dynamic component interfaces.

Application to Open Editor Framework illustrates practical utility.

Guidelines enable mapping to ActiveX, CORBA, Java Beans.

Abstract

We adopt a component model based on object-oriented systems, introducing the concepts of components and their structure. A component consists of a dynamically changing set of connected objects. Only some of these objects are interface objects, and are thus accessible from the environment. During the component lifetime not only the number of objects, but also that of interface objects, and their connections change. To describe this situation, we introduce component interface diagrams (CIDs)-an adaption of UML diagrams-as a notation to characterize interfaces of components, their structure, and their navigability. We show how CIDs can be used to describe the in-house developed Open Editor Framework (OEF). Finally, we give guidelines that allow to map components described with CIDs directly to several component technologies, like ActiveX, CORBA, or Java Beans