Accommodating data heterogeneity in ULS systems

Ultra-Large Scale (ULS) systems comprise numerous software elements designed and implemented by independent stakeholders whose requirements may vary widely. Consequently, elements in a ULS system may use different data formats, which complicates integration of elements. Writing code to robustly convert data from one format to another requires time and skills that some programmers may lack. Worse, the stakeholders who control a software element may change the element's data format at any point in the future without warning, causing format incompatibility not foreseen during the ULS system's construction. To address heterogeneity of data formats, we present a new abstraction called "topes". Each tope describes one kind of data, including known formats of that data and rules for transforming values among formats. Labeling the inputs and outputs of software elements with topes raises the level of abstraction so that elements produce and consume certain kinds of data, rather than particular formats.

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