Language Features for the Interconnection of Software Components

Abstract The increasing size and complexity of software systems calls not only for methods to determine their optimal breakdown into components but also for clear and precise techniques to specify (and control) the interconnections among these components. In the various subfields involved with this issue—software engineering, programming languages, conceptual modeling, and knowledge representation—different backgrounds lead to different approaches for modeling component interconnection. We review different language paradigms for specifying component interconnection and provide a unifying framework for comparing linguistic features for interconnection specification. Examples of such features are different kinds of components, semantic categories of interconnection relations, the granularity and precision of interconnection specifications, and the structure of interconnections. Besides a feature comparison, the framework presented allows for a focused choice of expressing those aspects of component interconnection that are deemed critical for understanding the cooperation of components in development or maintenance efforts of very large systems. We conclude with a discussion of the role of interconnection specification in software development and with hints for problems worthy of further investigation.