1995 Reports

An Interoperability Model for Process-Centered Software Engineering Environments and Its Implementation in Oz

Ben-Shaul, Israel Z.; Kaiser, Gail E.

A process-centered software engineering environment (PSEE) enables to model, evolve, and enact the process of software development and maintenance. This paper addresses the problem of process-interoperability among decentralized and autonomous PSEEs by presenting the generic International Alliance model, which consists of two elements, namely Treaty and Summit. The Treaty abstraction allows pairwise peer-peer definition of multi-site shared sub-processes that are integrated inside each of the participating sites, while retaining the definition- and evolution-autonomy of non-shared local sub-processes. Summits are the execution abstraction for Treaty-defined sub-processes. They enact Treaty sub-processes in multiple sites by successively alternating between shared and private execution modes: the former is used for the synchronous execution of the shared activities, and the latter is used for the autonomous execution of any private subtasks emanating from the shared activities. We describe the realization of the models in the Oz multi-site PSEE and evaluate the models and system based on experience gained from using Oz for production purposes. We also consider the application of the model to Petri net-based and grammar-based PSEEs.