A Framework for Combining Multiple Component Models

by
Kostadin Damevski

Advised by
Steve Parker

Systems such as Enterprise Java Beans, COM, CORBA, CCA, and others typically do not interact with one another in a straightforward manner, and it is difficult to take components developed for one system and re-deploy them in another. Users must typically select a single system or face the challenges of manually managing the data transfer between multiple (usually) incompatible systems. By using a meta-component model and automatic bridge generation, we combine support for a number of component models within one framework. The meta-component models provide an abstraction that allows many component models to exist within our framework. It further allows components of these disparate models to communicate and solve problems by connecting to components of the same type. To facilitate inter-component model communication, we interpose bridge components that mediate the communication between two disparate component types. In order to address the challenging task of creating such a bridge, we use a semi-automatic approach that, once configured, is able to bridge most instances of two given component models. As a result, our framework, SCIRun2, can currently utilize SCIRun dataflow components, CCA components, and VTK objects in the same simulation. It has the ability to further combine support for an unlimited number of other component types.