1. Requirements for Component Integration Technology David Lewis FlowThru Technical Co-ordinator Department of Computer Science University College London dlewis@cs.ucl.ac.uk

2. FlowThru Overview EU funded- started Mar’98, ends Feb’00 Partners: –Waterford Institute of Technology(IRL), STS(UK), AlgoSystems(GR), GMD-Fokus(DE), TCD (IRL), UHC (DK), Alcatel Bell (BE), UCL (UK), Surrey University (UK), Alcatel Corporate Research (FR) Input from: –Previous ACTS projects implementing advanced (often-TINA based) management systems –EURESCOM: methodology, trouble ticketting –Standards from TINA, TMF, ITU-T, OMG

3. FlowThru Goals To provide validated Guidelines on how to build management system from Reusable Components, that satisfy Business Process requirements Disseminate results to industry via Guidelines: –Development Methodology: UML, OOSE, use cases, facades –Component Integration Technology: CORBA Components/EJB, Workflow, technology gateways Integrate existing components from ACTS projects and demonstrate working integrated management systems –Similar to catalyst projects built from research implementations –Separate demonstrators for fulfilment, assurance and accounting

4. FlowThru Business Context Standards Developers Software Vendors Service Provider Service Customer 3 rd Party Service Provider open standards management systemsmanagement applications management services components and platforms Mgmt System Developers Development Operations

5. Broad Component Integration Requirements Need common mechanisms for usefully representing components at different stages of management system development lifecycle Need to hide heterogeneity/evolution in distribution technologies from component developer/user Components must directly support business processes and their interactions Need clear mechanisms for adapting components to application requirements Need to be able to “componentise” legacy systems

6. FlowThru Approach database CMIP CORBA TMN API workflow agent workflow engine workflow application data component event mechanism CMIP agent CORBA- CMIP gateway

7. CORBA Components/EJB Container: –distribution support –persistency support –lifecycle support –transactions –security –event management –resource management (threads, logging, resource sharing) Component: –multiple interfaces –emitted events –properties –introspection –session and entity types

8. Workflow Overview Workflow Engine Management Service Request Management Process Rule Base Shared(Component) Data Server InvokedComponent InvokedComponent InvokedComponent

9. Workflow Components Control flow between components delegated to Workflow engine Data passed between components via common data server CORBA Workflow Agents used wrap components Workflow agents offer simple one way control flow operations and emit events on completion/exception FlowThru investigating wrapping legacy management components in workflow agents

10. TINA Object Model Object 2 Object 1 Object 3 Computational Objects Object group Operational Interfaces Stream Interfaces TINA Object Definition Language (ODL)- strict superset of IDL Multiple interfaces, stream interfaces, object groups Version now submitted to ITU-T SG-10

11. Software i/f Design model exports i/f exports i/f Use case model exports Component Modelling with Facades trace Requirement s Capture Requirement s Analysis Design Implementatio n Testing Requirement s model Analysis model Software Design model trace Component i/f exports trace Deploy facade Analysis model

12. Comparison to GB909 TINA and CORBA Components/EJB address many of the contract issues Workflow embodies the strict separation of business and persistent data, also present in EJB session and entity bean types CORBA Components/EJB and Facades go further in support for component development, selection, modification and integration FlowThru could undertake an assessment of CORBA Components/EJB, WorkFlow and TINA ODL against GB909 is deemed useful