Software Architecture Chapter 2: Architectural Patterns

1. Software Architecture Chapter 2: Architectural Patterns Feng Zhiyong Tianjin University Apr. 5, 2007

2. Interactive Systems • The Model-View-Controller pattern (MVC) divides an interactive application into three components. • The model contains the core functionality and data. • Views display information to the user. • Controllers handle user input. • Views and controllers together comprise the user interface. A change-propagation mechanism ensures consistency between the user interface and the model. • The Presentation-Abstraction-Controlpattern (PAC) defines a structure for interactive software systems in the form of a hierarchy of cooperating agents. Every agent is responsible for a specific aspect of the application's functionality and consists of three components: • presentation, abstraction, and control. This subdivision separates the human-computer interaction aspects of the agent from its functional core and its communication with other agents.

3. Model-View-Controller • The Model-View-Controller architectural pattern (MVC) divides an interactive application into three components. • The model contains the core functionality and data. • Views display information to the user. • Controllers handle user input. • Views and controllers together comprise the user interface. A change-propagation mechanism ensures consistency between the user interface and the model.

4. Example Context: Interactive applications with a flexible human-computer interface.

5. Problem • The same information is presented differently in different windows, for example, in a bar or pie chart. • The display and behavior of the application must reflect data manipulations immediately. • Changes to the user interface should be easy, and even possible at run-time. • Supporting different 'look and feel' standards or porting the user interface should not affect code in the core of the application.

6. Solution • MVC divides an interactive application into the three areas: processing, output, and input. • The model component encapsulates core data and functionality. The model is independent of specific output representations or input behavior. • View components display information to the user. A view obtains the data from the model. There can be multiple views of the model. • Each view has an associated controller component. Controllers receive input, usually as events that encode mouse movement, activation of mouse buttons, or keyboard input. Events are translated to service requests for the model or the view. The user interacts with the system solely through controllers.

7. Structure

8. Structure

9. Dynamics----Scenario I • The controller accepts user input in its event-handling procedure, interprets the event, and activates a service procedure of the model. • The model performs the requested service. This results in a change to its internal data. • The model notifies all views and controllers registered with the change-propagation mechanism of the change by calling their update procedures. • Each view requests the changed data from the model and redisplays itself on the screen. • Each registered controller retrieves data from the model to enable or disable certain user functions. For example, enabling the menu entry for saving data can be a consequence of modifications to the data of the model. • The original controller regains control and returns from its event-handling procedure.

10. Dynamics----Scenario I

11. Dynamics----Scenario II • The model instance is created, which then initializes its internal data structures. • A view object is created. This takes a reference to the model as a parameter for its initialization. • The view subscribes to the change-propagation mechanism of the model by calling the attach procedure. • The view continues initialization by creating its controller. It passes references both to the model and to itself to the controller's initialization procedure. • The controller also subscribes to the change-propagation mechanism by calling the attach procedure. • After initialization, the application begins to process events.

12. Dynamics----Scenario II

13. Implementation • Separate human-computer interaction from core functionality.

14. Implementation • Implement the change-propagation mechanism

15. Implementation • Design and implement the views.

16. Implementation • Design and implement the controllers.

17. Implementation • Design and implement the view-controller relationship.

18. Implementation • Implement the set-up of MVC.

19. Dynamic view creation Apply the View Handler design pattern to implement this view management component. 'Pluggable controllers. Implementation

20. Implementation • Infrastructure for hierarchical views and controllers. • Further decoupling from system dependencies.

21. Variants • Document-View

22. Known Uses • Smalltalk • MFC • ET++

23. Consequences ---- benefits • Multiple views of the same model. • Synchronized views. • 'Pluggable' views and controllers. • Exchangeability of 'look and feel'. • Framework potential.

24. Consequences ---- liabilities • Increased complexity. • Potential for excessive number of updates. • Intimate connection between view and controller. • Close coupling of views and controllers to a model. • Inefficiency of data access in view. • Inevitability of change to view and controller when porting. • Difficulty of using MVC with modern user-interface took.

25. Presentation-Abstraction-Control • The Presentation-Abstraction-Control architectural pattern (PAC) defines a structure for interactive software systems in the form of a hierarchy of cooperating agents. Every agent is responsible for a specific aspect of the application's functionality and consists of three components: presentation, abstraction, and control. This subdivision separates the human-computer interaction aspects of the agent from its functional core and its communication with other agents.

26. Example Context Development of an interactive application with the help of agents.

27. Problem • Agents often maintain their own state and data. • Interactive agents provide their own user interface, since their respective human-computer interactions often differ widely. • Systems evolve over time.

28. Solution

29. Structure • The main responsibility of the top-lewl PAC agent is to provide the global data model of the software. • It allows lower-level agents to make use of the services of the top-level agents, mostly to access and manipulate the global data model. Incoming service requests from lower-level agents are forwarded either to the abstraction component or the presentation component. • It coordinates the hierarchy of PAC agents. It maintains information about connections between the top-level agent and lower-level agents. The control component uses this information to ensure correct collaboration and data exchange between the top –level agent and lower-level agents. • It maintains information about the interaction of the user with the system. For example, it may check whether a particular operation can be performed on the data model when triggered by the user. It may also keep track of the functions called to provide history or undo/redo services for operations on the functional core.

30. Structure • Bottom-level PAC agents represent a specific semantic concept of the application domain • The presentation component of a bottom-level PAC agent presents a specific view of the corresponding semantic concept, and provides access to all the functions users can apply to it. • The abstraction component of a bottom-level PAC agent has a similar responsibility as the abstraction component of the top-level PAC agent, maintaining agent-specific data. • The control component of a bottom-level PAC agent maintains consistency between the abstraction and presentation components, thereby avoiding direct dependencies between them. • The control component of bottom-level PAC agents communicates with higher-level agents to exchange events and data.

31. Structure

32. Structure

33. Structure

34. Dynamics----Scenario I • A user asks the presentation component of the view coordinator agent to open a new bar chart. • The control of the view coordinator agent instantiates the desired bar-chart agent. • The view coordinator agent sends an 'open' event to the control component of the new bar-chart agent. • The control component of the bar-chart agent first retrieves data from the top-level PAC agent. The view coordinator agent mediates between bottom and top-level agents. The data returned to the bar-chart agent is saved in its abstraction component. Its control component then calls the presentation component to display the chart. • The presentation component creates a new window on the screen, retrieves data from the abstraction component by requesting it from the control component, and finally displays it within the new window.

35. Dynamics----Scenario I

36. Dynamics----Scenario II • The user enters new data into a spreadsheet. The control component of the spreadsheet agent forwards this data to the top-level PAC agent. • The control component of the top-level PAC agent receives the data and tells the top-level abstraction to change the data repository accordingly. The abstraction component of the top-level agent asks its control component to update all agents that depend on the new data. The control component of the top-level PAC agent therefore notifies the view coordinator agent. • The control component of the view coordinator agent forwards the change notification to all view PAC agents it is responsible for coordinating. • As in the previous scenario, all view PAC agents then update their data and refresh the image they display.

37. Dynamics----Scenario II

38. Implementation • Define a model of the application. Analyze the problem domain and map it onto an appropriate software structure. • Which services should the system provide? • Which components can fulfill these services? • What are the relationships between components? • How do the components collaborate? • What data do the components operate on? • How will the user interact with the software? • Define a general strategy for organizing the PAC hierarchy. • Specify A the top-level PAC agent. Identify those parts of the analysis model that represent the functional core of the system.

39. Implementation • Specify the bottom-level PAC agents.Identify those components of the analysis model that represent the smallest self-contained units of the system on which the user can perform operations or view presentations. • Specify bottom-level PAC agents for system services. Often an application includes additional services that are not directly related to its primary subject. • Specify intermediate-level PAC agents to compose lower-level PAC agents. Often, several lower-level agents together form a higher-level semantic concept on which users can operate. • Specify intermediate-level PAC agents to coordinate lower-level PAC agents. Many systems offer multiple views of the same semantic concept.

40. Implementation • Separate core functionality from human-computer interaction. For every PAC agent, introduce presentation and abstraction components.

41. Implementation • Provide the external interface. • One way of implementing communication with other agents is to apply the Composite Message pattern • A second option is to provide a public interface that offers every service of an agent as a separate function. • A PAC agent can be connected to other PAC agents in a flexible and dynamic way by using registration functionality, as introduced by the Publisher-Subscriber pattern. • If a PAC agent depends on data or information maintained by other PAC agents, you should provide a change-propagation mechanism. Such a mechanism should involve all agents and all levels of the hierarchy and work in both directions.

42. Implementation • Link the hierarchy together. • After implementing the individual PAC agents you can build the final PAC hierarchy. Connect every PAC agent with those lower-level PAC agents with which it directly cooperates. • Provide the PAC agents that dynamically create and delete lower-level PAC agents with functionality to dynamically extend or reduce the PAC hierarchy. For example, the view coordinator agent in our information system creates a new view PAC agent if the user wants to open a particular view, and deletes this agent when the user closes the window in which the view is displayed.

43. Variants • PAC agents as active objects. Many applications, especially interactive ones, benefit from multi-threading. The mobile robot system is an example of a multi-threaded PAC architecture. Every PAC agent can be implemented as an active object that lives in its own thread of control. Design patterns like Active Object and Half-Sync/Half-Async can help you implement such an architecture. • PAC agents as processes. To support PAC agents located in different processes or on remote machines, use proxies to locally represent these PAC agents and to avoid direct dependencies on their physical location. Use the Forwarder-Receiver pattern) or the Client-Dispatcher-Server pattern (323) to implement the inter-process communication (IPC) between PAC agents.

44. Known Uses • Network Traffic Management. • Gathering traffic data from switching units. • Threshold checking and generation of overflow exceptions. • Logging and routing of network exceptions. • Visualization of traffic flow and network exceptions. • Displaying various user-configurable views of the whole network. • Statistical evaluations of traffic data. • Access to historic traffic data. • System administration and configuration.

45. Network Traffic Management

46. Known Uses • Mobile Robot. • Provide the robot with a description of the environment it will work • in, places in this environment, and routes between places. • Subsequently modify the environment. • Specify missions for the robot. • Control the execution of missions. • Observe the progress of missions.

47. Mobile Robot

48. Consequences-benefits • Separation of concerns. • Support for change and extension. • Support for multi-tasking.

49. Consequences-liabilities • Increased system complexity. • Complex control component. • Efficiency. The overhead in the communication between PAC agents may impact system efficiency. • Applicability. The smaller the atomic semantic concepts of an application are, and the greater the similarity of their user interfaces, the less applicable this pattern is.

50. Adaptable Systems • Systems evolve over time-new functionality is added and existing services are changed. • The Microkernel pattern applies to software systems that must be able to adapt to changing system requirements. It separates a minimal functional core from extended functionality and customer-specific parts. The microkernel also serves as a socket for plugging in such extensions and coordinating their collaboration. • The Reflection pattern provides a mechanism for changing structure and behavior of software systems dynamically. It supports the modification of fundamental aspects, such as type structures and function call mechanisms. In this pattern, an application is split into two parts. A meta level provides information about selected system properties and makes the software self-aware. A base level includes the application logic. Its implementation builds on the meta level. Changes to information kept in the meta level affect subsequent base-level behavior.