Multimedia building blocks for distributed applications

Building blocks for multimedia integration into distributed applications are special components decorated with three types of interfaces: first, the management interface for access to application management, resource reservation and so on; second, the data interface as data sink or data source for multimedia data communication; third, the user control interface to connect the building block to control the multimedia functions by the application. The object oriented approach to interface specification leads to an interface hierarchy. Only the top levels of the hierarchy are predefined. Interfaces for any special application can be build by refinement and multiple inheritance. The multimedia application definition using the building blocks defined as components is a general approach that can easily integrate existing development tools