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European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming

ECOOP 2003: ECOOP 2003 – Object-Oriented Programming pp 74–102Cite as

Language Support for Connector Abstractions

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2743))

Abstract

Software connectors are increasingly recognized as an important consideration in the design and implementation of object-oriented software systems. Connectors can be used to communicate across a distributed system, coordinate the activities of several objects, or adapt one object’s interface to the interface of another. Mainstream object-oriented languages, however, do not provide explicit support for connectors. As a result, connection code is intermingled with application code, making it difficult to understand, evolve, and reuse connection mechanisms.

In this paper, we add language support for user-defined connectors to the ArchJava language. Our design enables a wide range of connector abstractions, including caches, events, streams, and remote method calls. Developers can describe both the run-time semantics of connectors and the typechecking semantics. The connector abstraction supported by ArchJava cleanly separates reusable connection code from application logic, making the semantics of connections more explicit and allowing engineers to easily change the connection mechanisms used in a program. We evaluate the expressiveness and the engineering benefits of our design in a case study applying ArchJava to the PlantCare ubiquitous computing application.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Box 352350, Seattle, Washington, USA, 98195-2350

    Jonathan Aldrich, Vibha Sazawal, Craig Chambers & David Notkin

Authors
  1. Jonathan Aldrich
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  2. Vibha Sazawal
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  3. Craig Chambers
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  4. David Notkin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research,  

    Luca Cardelli

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Aldrich, J., Sazawal, V., Chambers, C., Notkin, D. (2003). Language Support for Connector Abstractions. In: Cardelli, L. (eds) ECOOP 2003 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2743. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45070-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45070-2_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40531-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45070-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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