Connector Design (Contd...)

Lessons learnt from Examples

• Families of products from kits of Components

  • Carefully design interactions between components as the components themselves.

• Minimize connector types

  • Reconfiguration made possible by small number of connector types with respect to components.

• Design of a component infrastructure

  • Define connectors separately from and often before individual components.

  • For example, make decisions on basic technology of interaction – procedure calls or Remote method invocations.

  • Well designed connectors are also domain specific and based on business models within which the components work.

• Separation of roles in CBD

  • Product building

  • Component infrastructure design

  • Component Design

• No adaptation - use components 'as is'.

  • Modified components means potential savings lost.

  • Make components as general as possible

  • Enforce “No Adaptation” by selling components in binary packaged form.

• Pluggable connector definitions

  • Connectors must be precisely defined

  • Component developer must conform to them.

  • Definition of a connector - Functional interfaces + the behavior to which component must conform.