Architecture of an integration and portability platform

The Software BackPlane is an integration and portability platform that facilitates software tool integration, portability, workflow control, configuration management and shared access to project information. The Software BackPlane provides a consistent user environment based on the X Window standard, portability services using a generic operating system interface, and structured data management, using a multilayered data repository. The author explores architectural alternatives for the data repository. The ANSI/SPARC taxonomy is used to characterize the external, conceptual and internal model of the Software BackPlane's object-oriented data management facilities.<<ETX>>