On the Construction of Distributed RM-ODP Specifications

LIP6, is association with EDF R& D, proposes a framework that deals with the construction of heterogeneous and distributed specifications. This paper focuses on the part of work devoted to the distribution aspects of a specification, especially the distributed specifications consistency and management. It describes our approach to deal with these two aspects. Regarding the distributed specifications consistency, we advocate that the modeling language must enable the partitioning of the specification into several pieces and provide means to express the dependencies between them. For this reason, we make use of RM-ODP language as it includes some concepts that fit these requirements. However, RM-ODP is not prescriptive enough to be really helpful when elaborating distributed specifications. Thus we propose distributed specifications construction rules in identifying the needed concepts and in defining their usage rules. Concerning the distributed specifications management, we provide a so-called Distributed Specifications Management System (DSMS), that is an RM-ODP specifications repository built in conformance with the MOF and CORBA standards. Such a repository provides facilities to distribute specifications, to link pieces of specifications and to handle them.