Multi-view refinement of AO-connectors in distributed software systems

This paper presents MView, a technique that enables the separation of various developer stakeholder views on an architectural connector in distributed software systems. While state-of-the-art AO-ADLs focus on describing compositions using aspect-based connectors, there is no support for describing a connector across multiple architectural views. This is, however, essential for distributed systems, where run-time and distribution characteristics are not represented in a single view. The result is connectors that suffer from monolithic descriptions, where the views of different stakeholders are tangled. MView untangles these stakeholder views by defining them in separate modules and specifying refinement relations between these modules. We have integrated MView in a prototypical ADL, which allows code generation for multiple AO-middleware platforms. We evaluate MView in terms of stakeholder effort in a content distribution system for e-Media. We have created an Eclipse-plugin that supports the ADL, and performs code generation to the JBoss and Spring middleware platforms.