The development of user interfaces (UIs) is one of the most timeconsuming aspects in software development. In this context, the lack of proper reuse mechanisms for UIs is increasingly becoming manifest, especially as software development is more and more moving toward composite applications. In this paper we propose a framework for the integration of stand-alone modules or applications, where integration occurs at the presentation layer. Hence, the final goal is to reduce the effort required for UI development by maximizing reuse.The design of the framework is inspired by lessons learned from application integration, appropriately modified to account for the specificity of the UI integration problem. We provide an abstract component model to specify characteristics and behaviors of presentation components and propose an event-based composition model to specify the composition logic. Components and composition are described by means of a simple XML-based language, which is interpreted by a runtime middleware for the execution of the resulting composite application. A proof-ofconcept prototype allows us to show that the proposed component model can also easily be applied to existing presentation components, built with different languages and/or component technologies.
In service-oriented architectures, everything is a service and everyone is a service provider. Web services (or simply services) are loosely coupled software components that are published, discovered, and invoked across the Web. As the use of Web service grows, in order to correctly interact with them, it is important to understand the business protocols that provide clients with the information on how to interact with services. In dynamic Web service environments, service providers need to constantly adapt their business protocols for reflecting the restrictions and requirements proposed by new applications, new business strategies, and new laws, or for fixing problems found in the protocol definition. However, the effective management of such a protocol evolution raises critical problems: one of the most critical issues is how to handle instances running under the old protocol when it has been changed. Simple solutions, such as aborting them or allowing them to continue to run according to the old protocol, can be considered, but they are inapplicable for many reasons (for example, the loss of work already done and the critical nature of work). In this article, we present a framework that supports service managers in managing the business protocol evolution by providing several features, such as a variety of protocol change impact analyses automatically determining which ongoing instances can be migrated to the new version of protocol, and data mining techniques inferring interaction patterns used for classifying ongoing instances migrateable to the new protocol. To support the protocol evolution process, we have also developed
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