ITR/SY(CISE): Compositional Connectors

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NSF ITR Proposal #0113810Compositional ConnectorsDavid GarlanFor systems composed from independently developed parts, specialized forms ofinteraction are often needed to bridge component mismatches or to achieveextra-functional properties (e.g., security, reliability), making the design andimplementation of these interaction mechanisms a critical issue. Unfortunately,system developers have few options: they must live with available, but ofteninadequate, generic support for interaction (such as RPC), or they musthandcraft specialized mechanisms at great cost.This research investigates a new approach whereby interaction mechanisms areconstructed compositionally. Specifically, basic connectors (such as RPC ordata streams) can be augmented with selected adaptations or enhancements toproduce a more complex connector that meets the system requirements. Thiswork will investigate the hypothesis that (a) there exists a collection ofgeneral-purpose transformations that can be applied to connectors to produceincreasingly rich forms of interaction, and (b) tools can be built to automatethe application of these transformations to existing interaction mechanisms.If successful, this research will reduce the cost of component integration bypartially automating the production of complex interaction mechanisms, improvethe quality of systems by making it simple to add security and dependabilityfeatures, and develop new foundations for specifying and reasoning about complexinteraction mechanisms.