Eliminating Mismatching Connections between Components by Adopting an Agent-Based Approach

During component composition, mismatches may occur on different aspects, such as interaction behaviors between components and features imposed by architectural styles. In this paper, we studied architectural mismatches related to connecting components using a specified architectural style, which implies that the connections supported by components may be incompatible with the connection supposed by the architectural style. First, we formalized components involved in different architectural styles in the pi-calculus. Next, we studied the formal foundation of the interconnectivity between components to exploit under what situation two heterogeneous components are possible to interconnect together properly. Then, we described an adaptor-based solution for composing components supporting different architectural styles by introducing the notation of negative component. In the end of this paper, we presented an agent-based implementation for the solution, in which agents are used to wrap components and can automatically transform messages specific to one architectural style into messages specific to another style by using architectural stylespecific knowledge that agents possess.