The SYNTHESIS environment for component-based software development

Abstract

Component based software development places an emphasis on identifying and managing interdependencies among preexisting pieces of software in order to integrate them into new systems. Traditional software development methodologies, on the other hand, place an emphasis on representing components, leaving the description and management of component interdependencies implicit, or distributed among the components. To support component based software development, we need new methodologies and tools which elevate the representation and management of software component interdependencies to a distinct design problem, orthogonal to the specification and implementation of the core functional pieces of an application. A core element of such methodologies will be a "design handbook" of software component interconnection, which catalogues common software interconnection, which catalogues common software interconnection dependencies and sets of alternative protocols for managing them. SYNTHESIS, a component based software development environment based on this perspective, has been developed and successfully used to minimize the manual effort required to integrate independently developed components into new applications.