Arcadia Papers: ABSTRACT
"Endeavors: A Process System Integration Infrastructure",
by Gregory Alan Bolcer and Richard N. Taylor to appear in
Proceedings of the Fourth International Confernce on the Software
Process, Brighton, England, December 1996.
Abstract
Abstract -- As software projects evolve, possibly differing in size,
complexity, scope, and purpose, the development processes that support
the project must evolve to reflect these changes. For a distributed
project, maintaining proper communications, coordinating
between project stakeholders, and maintaining managerial control
become increasingly important and, unfortunately, increasingly difficult.
The Endeavors system is an open, distributed process modeling and
execution infrastructure that addresses communication, coordination,
and control issues. Complex processes may require (a) distribution of
people and processes, (b) event-based and intermediate-format integration
of external tools, (c) a low entry barrier through ease-of-use and
incremental adoption, (d) ability to customize and reuse objects, tools,
and policies, and (e) dynamic change of runtime processes, objects, and
behaviors. Endeavors' solution architecture achieves these goals through
application of five key design strategies: (1) maintaining multiple
object model layers, (2) implementing the architecture as a set of
highly componentized, lightweight, transportable, concurrent elements,
(3) providing customization capabilities for each layer of the object model,
(4) using a reflexive object model to support dynamic change, and (5) allowing
dynamic loading and changing of objects including loading of executable
handlers, new object types, and extensions. We discuss these goals and
design strategies, describe the architecture, and describe the current
status of the project and its relevance to its own development.
The Arcadia Project
<arcadia-www@ics.uci.edu>
Last modified: Mon Feb 27 11:35:22 1995