Abstract channels as connectors for software components in group communication services

Building new services by assembling software components, when adopted at the communication level, would allow developers to build powerful group communication services by assembling proven and efficient algorithms for ordered group communication. The integration of communication protocols with different delivery policies has not been addressed in past research on group communication. This integration cannot be considered as concatenation of protocols and needs delivery policies to be redefined in the context of multi-channel communication. Our paper deals with this issue. We define communication channels as software connectors of the communication level for coordinated group communication. We cover the three standard delivery policies (FIFO order, causal order, and total order).