Visual component assembly and tool support based on system architecture

Component-based development leverages software reusability and reduces development costs. Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is a component model developed to reduce the complexity of software development and to facilitate reuse of components. However, EJB does not support component assembly by a plug-and-play technique due to the hard-wired composition at the code level. To cope with this problem, an architecture for EJB component assembly is defined at the abstract level and the inconsistency between the system architecture and its implementation must be eliminated at the implementation level. We propose a component-based application development tool named the COBALT assembler that supports the design and implementation of EJB component assembly by a plug-and-play technique based on the architecture style. The system architecture is first defined by the Architecture Description Language (ADL). The wrapper code and glue code are then generated for the assembly. After the consistency between the architecture and its implementation is checked, the assembled EJB components are deployed in an application server as a new composite component. We use the COBALT assembler for a shopping mall system and demonstrate that it can promote component reuse and leverage the system maintainability.