Software development with components

The CBSE Process [Sommerville], chap.19.2 Component composition [Sommerville], chap 19.3 Composition Issues: Architectural mismatch [CrnkovicBook], chap 9 [GarlanArticle] Predictable composition [CrnkovicBook], chap 9 Software development with components

Software development with components The CBSE Process [Sommerville], chap.19.2 Component composition [Sommerville], chap 19.3 Composition Issues: Architectural mismatch [CrnkovicBook], chap 9 [GarlanArticle] Predictable composition [CrnkovicBook], chap 9

The software process • A structured set of activities required to develop a software system • Specification; • Design; • Validation; • Evolution. • A software process model is an abstract representation of a process. It presents a description of a process from some particular perspective.

Generic software process models • The sequential/waterfall model • Separate and distinct phases of specification and development. • Evolutionary development • Specification, development and validation are interleaved. • Development of system is done gradually in many repetitive stages • Each stage increases the knowledge of the system requirements and/or the system functionality • Models: • Iterative model • Incremental model • Prototyping model • Rational Unified Process model • Component-based software engineering • The system is assembled from existing components.

Component-Based Development • Design for reuse (Domain Engineering): Component Development • Producing reusable components • Design with reuse (Application Engineering): System Development • Using components to compose and integrate systems

The CBSE process • Design with reuse • When reusing components, it is essential to make trade-offs between ideal requirements and the services actually provided by available components. • This involves: • Developing outline requirements; • Searching for components then modifying requirements according to available functionality. • Searching again to find if there are better components that meet the revised requirements.

The CBSE process • The software development process must be adapted to reusing components Fig. 19.6 from [Sommerville]

The CBSE process • When reusing components, it is essential to make trade-offs between ideal requirements and the services actually provided by available components. • Design stages with CBSE: • Developing outline requirements: stakeholders should be as flexible as possible in defining requirements. • Identify candidate components • Requirements are refined and modified early in the process depending on the components available. • Architectural design: at latest in this stage (if not earlier) you decide on a component model and establish the high-level organization of the system • Identify candidate components again - Searching again to find if there are better components that meet the revised requirements and the established architecture • System development – composition process where the selected component are integrated.

The component identification process Component identification involves a number of subactivities • Component search: Where to find components: • Locally (inside software development organization) • Component marketplace • Component selection: • Complicated if there is not a direct mapping of requirements to components • Component validation • Check that the component behaves exactly as advertised Fig. 19.7 from [Sommerville]

Component identification issues • Trust. You need to be able to trust the supplier of a component. At best, an untrusted component may not operate as advertised; at worst, it can breach your security. • Requirements. Different groups of components will satisfy different requirements. • Validation. • The component specification may not be detailed enough to allow comprehensive tests to be developed. • Components may have unwanted functionality. How can you test this will not interfere with your application? • Consequence of these issues: • component search is often confined to a software development organisation • No viable component marketplace

Ariane launcher failure • In 1996, the 1st test flight of the Ariane 5 rocket ended in disaster when the launcher went out of control 37 seconds after take off. • The problem was due to a reused component from a previous version of the launcher (the Inertial Navigation System) that failed because assumptions made when that component was developed did not hold for Ariane 5. • The functionality that failed in this component was not required in Ariane 5.

Component composition • The process of assembling components to create a system. • Composition involves integrating components with each other and with the component infrastructure. • The ways in which components are integrated with this infrastructure are specific for each component model • Normally you also have to write ‘glue code’ to integrate components.

Types of composition • Sequential composition where the composed components are executed in sequence. This involves composing the provides interfaces of each component. • Glue code: calls component A, collects result, then calls component B with that result as parameter • Hierarchical composition where one component calls on the services of another. The provides interface of one component is composed with the requires interface of another. • Additive composition where the interfaces of two components are put together to create a new component.

Types of composition Figure 19.9 from [Sommerville]

Interface incompatibility • When you desig components specially for composition, interfaces are designed to be compatible and composition is easy. • When the components are developed independently for reuse, interfaces may be incompatible: • Parameter incompatibility where operations have the same name but are of different types. • Operation incompatibility where the names of operations in the composed interfaces are different. • Operation incompleteness where the provides interface of one component is a subset of the requires interface of another • Interface incompatibility is addressed by writing adaptors • Adaptors address the problem of component incompatibility by reconciling the interfaces of the components that are composed. • Different types of adaptor are required depending on the type of composition.

Example 1: Incompatible components Figure 19.10 from [Sommerville]

Example 1: Incompatible components • addressFinder component: finds the address that matches a phone number • mapper component: takes a post code and displays a street map of the area • emergency operator: receives an emergency phone call, identifies the calling number and displays the street map of the address to send there an emergency vehicle • Realised by composing an addressFinder with a mapper • Problem: addressFinder returns a string describing the complete address, but the mapper needs only the post code • An adaptor component called postCodeZipper takes the location data from address Finder and strips out the post code

Example 1: Composition through an adaptor • The component postCodeStripper is the adaptor that facilitates the sequential composition of addressFinder and mapper components. address = addressFinder.location (phonenumber) ; postCode = postCodeStripper.getPostCode (address) ; mapper.displayMap(postCode, 10000)

Example 2: Adaptor for data collector • There is an incompatibility between the provides interface of the sensor component with the requires interfaces of the data collection component Figure 19.11 from [Sommerville]

Interface semantics • Component composition assumes you can tell from the component documentation whether the interfaces are compatible • Syntactic compatibility: operation names and parameter types • Semantic compatibility: the meaning of parameters is right • You have to rely on component documentation to decide if interfaces that are syntactically compatible are actually compatible. • Example: Consider an interface for a PhotoLibrary component:

Example: Photo library composition • Compose a system that downloads images from a digital camera and stores them in a photograph library . The system user can provide additional info to catalog and describe the images Figure 19.12 from [Sommerville]

Example - formal description of photo library Figure 19.13 from [Sommerville]

Example - Photo library conditions explained • As specified, the OCL associated with the Photo Library component states that: • There must not be a photograph in the library with the same identifier as the photograph to be entered; • The library must exist - assume that creating a library adds a single item to it; • Each new entry increases the size of the library by 1; • If you retrieve using the same identifier then you get back the photo that you added; • If you look up the catalogue using that identifier, then you get back the catalogue entry that you made.

Composition trade-offs • When composing components, you may find conflicts between functional and non-functional requirements, and conflicts between the need for rapid delivery and system evolution. • You need to make decisions such as: • What composition of components is effective for delivering the functional requirements? • What composition of components allows for future change? • What will be the emergent properties of the composed system?

Example: Data collection and report generation • A system can be created through 2 alternative compositions Figure 19.14 from [Sommerville]

CBD Key points • During the CBSE process, the processes of requirements engineering and system design are interleaved. • Component composition is the process of ‘wiring’ components together to create a system. • When composing reusable components, you normally have to write adaptors to reconcile different component interfaces. • When choosing compositions, you have to consider required functionality, non-functional requirements and system evolution.

Component Integration • Integrating components can be illustrated as a mechanical process of “wiring” components together to form assemblies (connecting required and provided interfaces) • Standardization in form of component models like EJB, CORBA and COM: reduces some of the integration problems • Still Difficult to make components play well together: • Problem goes beyond interface compatibility (syntactic and semantic) • In many cases mismatches may be caused by low-level problems of interoperability, such as incompatibilities in programming languages, operating platforms, or database schemas. • Architectural mismatch results from implicit and conflicting assumptions that designers of components make about the environment in which these components will operate

“Architectural mismatch stems from mismatched assumptions a reusable part makes about the structure of the system it is to be part of. These assumptions often conflict with the assumptions of other parts and are almost always implicit, making them extremely difficult to analyze before building the system.” D. Garlan, R. Allen and J. Ockerbloom. “Architectural Mismatch: Why Reuse is So Hard,” IEEE Software, 12(6):17-26, November 1995 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/able/ftp/archmismatch-icse17/archmismatch-icse17.pdf Architectural mismatch

Architectural mismatch examples • 2 Cases • D. Garlan, R. Allen and J. Ockerbloom “Architectural Mismatch: Why Reuse is So Hard” • AESOP • P. Inverardi, A.L. Wolf, and D. Yankelevich, Static Checking of System Behaviors Using Derived Component Assumptions • Compressing proxy

AESOP Example • AESOP: developed by CMU, an environment that generates development environments tailored for systems of a particular style • Development approach: integrate existing components • Components: • A object oriented database (OBST – public domain system) • GUI toolkit (Interviews and Unidraw – Stanford university) • An event-based tool-integration mechanism (SoftBench from HP) • A RPC mechanism (Mach RPC Interface Generator – CMU) • Advantages: • Stable tools, used in several other projects • All tools implemented in C/C++ AND with source code available

Problems in AESOP integration (1) • SoftBench assumes all components have their own GUI interfaces and hence have the X-library’s communication primitives loaded => all components had to load X library even if they do not need it otherwise => code bloat • Different packages make different assumptions about which part holds the main thread of control: SoftBench, InterViews and MIG all use event loops that are incompatible with each other => rewrite InterViews event loop • Different components assume different things about the nature of data: Unidraw maintain a hierarchichal model for its objects but allows only top-level objects to be manipulated by users, Aesop requires that both parent and child objects can be manipulated => rewrite Unidraw hierarchy

Problems in AESOP integration (2) • Problems related to connectors: • Event broadcast, RPC • SoftBench handles RPC by mapping it within the event framework through 2 events (the request and the reply) => the caller becomes more complicated => use Mach RPC instead of Softbench • SoftBench’s event mechanism and Mach RPC assume different things about the nature of data to be transmitted: ASCII strings vs C data types => translation between formats => performance bottleneck

Problems in AESOP integration (3) • OBST assumes that all communications occurs in a star configuration, with itself in the center, but Aesop’s communication structure is a more general graph (tools cooperate also directly) => OBST’s transaction mechanism can result in deadlock or database inconsistency => write own transaction mechanism

Consequences for Aesop • Effort: • Estimated: one person-year • Reality: 5 person-years • Code bloat • Poor performance: due to overhead of the tool-to-database communication and excessive code • Need to modify existing packages: ex. Event loop of SoftBench and Interview • Need to reimplement some existing functions: OBST transaction mechanism, Hierarchical nested view management in InterView

Component integration issues • “Architectural mismatch stems from mismatched assumptions a reusable part makes about the structure of the system it is to be part of” • four classes of structural assumptions • The nature of components (infrastructure, control model, and data model) • The nature of connectors (protocols and data models) • The architecture of the assemblies (constraints on interactions) • The run-time construction process (order of instantiations).

Recommended practice • To avoid architectural mismatch: • Make architectural assumptions explicit • Use orthogonal loosely-coupled components • Use bridging techniques to solve mismatches • Provide design and composition guidelines

Compressing proxy example • Problem: adding data compression to a web server, in order to improve performance • Characteristics of web server: • Standard CERN HTTP server • Pipes-and-filters architecture • Proposed solution: • Add an external filter to compress data using gzip • External compressing filter communicates with the web server through Unix pipes (read and write data) • A pseudo filter (adaptor) is added to work with the external compressing filter

Process Function call interface Component UNIX pipe interface Channel Compressing Proxy 2 3 gzip 4 1 Pseudo Filter (Adaptor) Filter Filter Compressing proxy example Figure 9.1 from [CrnkovicBook]

Compressing proxy issues • HTTP server filters are forced to read when data are pushed at them • Unix filters choose when to read data -> gzip may block • Normal scenario: • Adaptor passes the data from input filter to gzip, and when the stream is closed, reads the data from gzip and writes in the output filter • Problematic scenario: • If the input file is large, because gzip has a limited internal buffer, it may attempt to write a portion of compressed data before the adaptor is ready: => deadlock (gzip blocks and adapter is blocked) • Solution: • Adaptor should handle data incrementally and use unblocking read and write

Lessons learned • Formal architectural description and analysis to uncover what they call “behavioral mismatch” • Not a component mismatch (components can be plugged together) • Components must express behavioural properties: • assumptions made about it’s environment such as data formats or buffer sizes • Its effects on the environment • The success of a component marketplace depends on: • Having trustworthy claims for component properties • Having global analysis techniques to support reasoning about the emergent properties of assemblies

From Integration to Composition • All assemblies are potential subsystem • Predicting the emergent behavior of assemblies • The result of component composition is a component assembly which can be used as a part of a larger composition • Composition goes beyond integration by allowing prediction of the emergent behavior of assemblies • Compositional reasoning: if we know the properties of components c1 and c2, then we can define a reasoning function f such that f(c1,c2) yields a property of an assembly comprising c1 and c2

Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components • What types of system quality attributes are developers interested in predicting? • What types of analysis techniques support reasoning about these quality attributes, and what component property values do they require as input parameters? • How are these component properties specified, measured, and certified?

Prediction-Enabled Component Technology • A prediction-enabled component technology consists of a component model and an associated analysis model • PECT integrates ideas from research in the areas of: • software architecture-based analysis, • component certification • software component technology • Prediction-enabled component technologies exploit the relationship between structural restrictions and assumptions of analysis models to compute properties of assemblies based on trusted properties of the assembly’s constituent components.

Analysis Model Analysis Model Component Model PECT interpretation Component Model assumptions not connected specializes influences Prediction-Enabled Component Technology

Summary • Component-based development includes: • Component development (design for reuse) • System development (design with reuse) • Component based system development: • evolutionary process model: sequence of outlining requirements, finding, selecting and validating components - > repeated as needed • System composition/integration may show problems: • Interface incompatibility • Architectural/ mismatch • Emergent properties of component assembly: • Certified component • Analysis techniques - compositional reasoning

Software development with components