Operational mechanisms for component-object based software architecture

COSA is an architecture description approach that defines system as a collection of components that interact with each other using connectors. Hence in COSA components and connectors are clearly separated and defined explicitly. By doing this COSA improves the reuse of not only components but also connectors. The reuse and evolve of COSA elements are achieved by using number of operational mechanisms. The basic elements of COSA are: components, connectors, interfaces, configurations, constraints, and properties. COSA describes systems in terms of types and instances. Components, connectors, and configurations are types that can be instantiated to build different architectures.