Slide 3 of 42
Notes:
Letís first see where weíre heading for; then we can look at some of the techniques Catalysis includes, and afterwards come back to see how they are applied to get these benefits.
CBD is about building a family of software products from a kit of components. Some of the components may be adapted from existing systems.
Scenario 1: planning to market a range of applications. Instead of building one product from scratch, we do what car manufacturers do: plan a kit of components that can be assembled in different ways to form a family of products. Som e of the components m
Scenario 2: setting up a distributed system for your company that can be reconfigured as often and as fast as the business is reorganised (which is pretty often!)
The trick of making a family of many products (or a system with many configurations) from one set of components is to make it possible to plug them together in different ways, rather like hardware components (think of chips, circuit boards, hi-fi boxes).
Catalysis provides:
- unambigous interface specification ó allowing a chief architect to specify an interface standard, and third parties (who donít know each other) to make components that will interoperate with each other
- techniques to define powerful component ëconnectorsí abstracting above the level of OO messages (sort of like multi-pin plugs);
- ëretrievalí techniques for relating the differing models that different components (especially bought-in or legacy components) usually have ó e.g. different notions of what a customer is.
