Control integration through message-passing in a software development environment

Understanding tool integration in a software development environment (SDE) is one of the key issues being addressed in work on providing automated support for large-scale software production. Work has been taking place at both the conceptual level (`what is integration?´) and the mechanistic level (`how do we provide integration?´). Existing integration mechanisms have been very rigid in the support they provide for integration. Users have been offered a fixed level of integration with little flexibility. However, one approach that has been implemented employs a control integration paradigm which appears to be flexible, supportive and adaptable to a wide range of end-user needs. Implementations of this paradigm are based on the notion of `message-passing´ as the underlying communication mechanism between SDE services. This paper examines the message-passing approach to integration in an SDE, looks at the general principles of the approach, describes some existing implementations, and discusses the use of such a mechanism as the basis for a more flexible environment that is open to experimentation with different approaches to integration