Connectors for bridging Mismatches between the Components of a Software Engineering Environment

Software Engineering Environments (SEE) are complex systems, for which congurability is an important requirement. Constructing SEEs out of existing tools is evidently desirable. During such a composition mismatches in the data models of dierent tools need to be dealt with. The brute force technique by hacking data translators into the implementation of individual tools has severe drawbacks regarding modularity, maintainability and extensibility of the composed system. We propose a novel technique for designing SEEs that uses explicit language constructs for bridging the mismatches in the data models, called dynamic view connectors (DVCs for short). We show how the separation of tool functionality from the concerns of bridging data model mismatches imposed by DVCs improved the congurability and maintainability of an existing SEE. Keywords Software Engineering Environments, Aspect Oriented Programming, Subject Oriented Programming, separation of concerns, Adaptive Plug&Play Componen..