The Overview

A component-based framework is being developed which facilitates software re-use and provides faster integration of laboratory automation systems. Implementation of laboratory automation systems by the traditional approach usually takes significant development time since both module-level and application-level software are written custom to a particular application. In addition, modification and adaptation of an existing system developed by the traditional approach, to new and enhanced applications, usually requires significant reconfiguration to system software, since the modifications affect the way in which the module-level software interacts with each other. In order to reduce the development time and build flexible and easily re-configurable systems, a component-based framework is being developed that addresses the issue of software reuse and run-time configuration. This framework is based on a services based architecture and supports stateless components that can be configured at run-time. In addition, this framework supports polymorphic behavior for all its components thereby allowing for integrated substitution of hardware offering similar functions into an existing system to enhance its functionality. The basic overview and concepts of this framework in the context of laboratory automation systems is outlined in this paper.