An IDL to SDL2000 compiler

Distributed systems evolution has led telecommunication management network (TMN) systems to use object-oriented middleware paradigm, mainly CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture). CORBA only includes a mechanism for defining object interfaces not for specifying the behaviour of these objects. The behaviour of a TMN system has to follow concrete and restrictive specifications, which are not reflected in CORBA IDL, at least not in a clear and unambiguously way. It is in this situation where the advantage of using an FDT (Formal Description Technique) like SDL (Specification and Description Language) appears. This work is the first step towards the overall goal of formally specifying the behaviour of the objects implementing management IDL interfaces. 1 IDL to SDL Mapping Formalising an IDL to SDL mapping is the first requirement because there is not a standard IDL-SDL mapping. An IDL to SDL compiler was developed in order to automate this translation. It translates IDL specifications into SDL structures that have to be completed with corresponding finite-state machines to obtain the desired behaviour. In [1] some guidelines to translate IDL elements into SDL96, [2], constructions are given. Guidelines related to predefined types, synchronous and asynchronous methods have been used. New rules based on SDL2000 [3] new characteristics (exceptions, interfaces, direct use of ASN.1 concepts like CHOICE or OPTIONAL) have been developed. And some ideas from other IDL mappings have been adopted for those SDL types that are not inmediately translatable. IDL to SDL mapping gives us the possibility to obtain SDL skeletons corresponding to a given IDL definition. Applying this mapping to generic management interfaces from [4] it will be obtained a generic SDL skeleton. This can be used as a base for SDL systems of specific management interfaces developed using the guidelines in [4]. Next step towards the overall objective is to define the behaviour of these skeletons.