Extending Process Route Diagrams for Use with Software Components, sid 289-300

When designing and developing software systems, there are several challenges that have to be addressed such as complexity, change management and system integrity. Trends in development processes, programming languages and software design are constantly changing. New programming paradigms have succeeded each other while the software systems have grown larger and more difficult to maintain. Component-oriented thinking provides the opportunity to re-use pre-fabricated parts to assemble software systems from tested building blocks, facilitating a rapid and consistent software development process. A component-oriented approach, however, affects both the life cycle and the development process of a software system. Therefore, a new way of viewing the life cycle as well as the development process for component-based software systems is presented in this thesis. A key issue when using a component-oriented approach is to consider both behavioral and static aspects of a software system. Furthermore, we need to be able to analyze the architecture of the enterprise as well as the software system architecture to deliver business value with information systems. System interdependencies will be placed in the foreground when integrating technical and organizational aspects of the information system. We therefore need a modeling technique suitable for focusing on semantic aspects rather than implementation-dependent issues. A suitable modeling technique is the Enterprise Modeling approach. This thesis will present a component-oriented approach to software system architectures using the Enterprise Modeling approach.