A Unified-Index Based Distributed Specification for Heterogeneous Components Management

With the development of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and component-based software engineering (CBSE), the number of various heterogeneous service components increases rapidly. They are stored in traditional repositories of different organization and can be independently accessed by users. However, it brings difficulty in component discovery and reuse. The utility of massive component resource can not be remarkably improved. In this paper, a unified-index (UI) based distributed specification for heterogeneous components management is introduced. It focuses on creating and maintaining a Unified-Index tree on the UI repository server, which has a management field grouped by some traditional repositories. Each UI repository server maps the components of its children traditional repositories into UI format and stores them in local UI repository. It also actively monitors the adding of new components and removing of invalid ones. Every query of component discovery will be diffused to all of the UI repository servers with transmitting of the root server. So in this desired architecture, users can consistently search and access all the heterogeneous components for further assembly and application, satisfying various personalized and comprehensive user requirements.