Object-Oriented Connector-Component Architectures

This paper presents an important extension of our contribution to FESCA ’04, which presented a generic framework for connector architectures. These architectures were defined by components, consisting of a body specification and a set of export interfaces, and connectors, consisting of a body specification and a set of import interfaces plus connecting transformations in both cases. A major restriction of this framework was given by the assumption of non-overlapping connector interfaces. In order to make the generic framework for connector architectures more applicable, it is enriched by the possibility of handling overlapping connector interfaces. Fortunately, it is possible to extend the main results presented at FESCA ’04 also to the new framework. Moreover, it is shown that the new framework can be applied to UML class diagrams, state machines and sequence diagrams as heterogeneous specification techniques. The resulting connector framework, including a concept for the composition of components and architectural reduction for UML specifications, is illustrated by a case study concerning the meta data management in Topic Maps.