Open complex computer systems are no silver bullet

Open systems, through the use of public, consensus based specifications or standards, are focussed on achieving the interoperability between, and the portability of components. In accommodating standards, open systems promise the advantages of plug-n-play technology, rapid prototyping and component re-use, while at the same time preventing system integration misfits, short system lifespan and difficulty in maintenance. In the development of open systems, it has been recognised that the specification and standardisation of interfaces, nor components, is of critical importance to realising these advantages. Due to the critical role of interfaces in open systems, the quality of the interface specifications used to engineer the interfaces is fundamental to the fulfilment of the promises of open systems. The authors contend that since current specifications and standards are deficient, then open complex computer systems, built using these specifications and standards, will indeed be no silver bullet. The authors present several ways forward, based on the inter-relationships between components, so that in the future the promises of open complex computer systems may still be fulfilled.

[1]  J.C. McKim.  Programming by contract , 1996, Computer.

[2]  Luqi,et al.  An introduction to the specification language SPEC , 1990, IEEE Software.

[3]  Peter Grogono,et al.  Identification of and Solutions to Shortcomings of LCL, a Larch/C Interface Specification Language , 1996, FME.

[4]  Henrik Eriksson,et al.  Beyond Data Models for Automated User Interface Generation , 1994, BCS HCI.

[5]  Eberhardt Rechtin.  Systems Architecting: Creating & Building Complex Systems , 1990 .

[6]  David Lorge Parnas,et al.  Simulating the behaviour of software modules by trace rewriting , 1993, Proceedings of 1993 15th International Conference on Software Engineering.

[7]  Christian Stary,et al.  Designing maintainable, reusable interfaces , 1992, IEEE Software.

[8]  C. Roark,et al.  Open Systems: a process for achieving affordability , 1996 .

[9]  W.P. Birmingham,et al.  Specification of interface behavior for the automatic generation of bus-interface models , 1994, Proceedings of ELECTRO '94.

[10]  Fred P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month , 1975, Reliable Software.

[11]  Derek K. Hitchins,et al.  Putting Systems to Work , 1993 .

[12]  Bertrand Meyer,et al.  Applying 'design by contract' , 1992, Computer.

[13]  David Coffield.  Open Systems: A Business Strategy for the 1990s , 1991 .

[14]  Thomas J. Mowbray,et al.  The essential CORBA - systems integration using distributed objects , 1995 .

[15]  Arno Puder,et al.  Towards Open Service Environments , 1994, Dagstuhl Seminar on Distributed Systems.

[16]  Ana Pasztor,et al.  LUIS—A logic for task‐oriented user interface specification , 1995, Int. J. Intell. Syst..

[17]  Gary T. Leavens,et al.  Protective Interface Specifications , 1997, TAPSOFT.

[18]  Gary E Fisher.  Guide on open system environment (OSE) procurements , 1994 .

[19]  David Lorge Parnas,et al.  Simulating the behaviour of software modules by trace rewriting , 1993, ICSE '93.

[20]  Venkatesh Choppella,et al.  Decomposition of Sequential Behavior Using , 1995 .

[21]  Douglas C. Schmidt,et al.  A high-performance end system architecture for real-time CORBA , 1997, IEEE Commun. Mag..

[22]  Bruce Blackshaw,et al.  Building distributed enterprise OLTP applications: current CORBA limitations , 1997, Proceedings First International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop.

[23]  Aniruddha S. Gokhale,et al.  Evaluating CORBA latency and scalability over high-speed ATM networks , 1997, Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[24]  Doug Lea,et al.  Interface-Based Protocol Specification of Open Systems using PSL , 1995, ECOOP.