An Analysis of the OSI Systems Management Architecture from an ODP Perspective

This paper analyses the OSI Systems Management Architecture (SMA) in terms of the RM-ODP concepts and architecture. It explains why ISO and ITU are considering new modelling techniques for implementing distributed systems management. In the information viewpoint, these new techniques might be inspired from GDMO. The paper also examines the use of automatic translation tools (GDMO to CORBA IDL translators) to integrate existing management agents within the future Open Distributed Management Architecture (ODMA)

On the Abstraction of Objects, Components and Interfaces

There is a wide consensus that an object explicitly embodies an abstraction, but the exact meaning of this statement is not necessarily well understood. This paper argues that the abstraction embodied by an object (or a component) implementation is nothing else than its specification. This implies that abstrac-tion does not appear automatically, it must be carefully constructed and maintained. The paper goes on to show, with the support of an example, that defining contracts for an objects operations does not nec-essarily result in a complete specification for this object (for example, specification invariants are a dif-ferent concept from invariants associated to operation contracts). Finally, the paper shows via an example the difference between object specifications and interface specifications

Object Modelling and Common Objects in the RM-ODP Information Language

This paper argues that the Reference-Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is a suitable basis for developing new standards pertaining to domain architectures, common business facilities, and common objects. However, the RM-ODP is difficult to understand, and there appears to be several divergent interpretations of it. This paper proposes and discusses an interpretation of information modelling that is both fully consistent with the ODP foundations, and compatible with some of the best practice in object-oriented software engineering

A New Definition for the Concept of Role, and Why it Makes Sense

There is widespread agreement in the object community that the concept of role is important for object modelling, but little agreement about what is to be understood by a role. In this paper, we present a new definition for the concept of role in the context of ISOs RM-ODP Foundations for object modelling. We show that the concept of role is similar to that of interface, but that there important differences between these two concepts. We also provide definitions for concepts, related to the role concept, that may also be called roles: role type and role object type. We then make the case for our definitions, showing that they are largely compatible with assertions that exist in the literature about roles

A Foundation for the Concept of Role in Object Modelling

Standardization experts in object modelling are having difficulties with defining the concept of rol

The Role of ¨Roles¨ in Use Case Diagrams

Use cases are the modeling technique of UML for formalizing the functional requirements placed on systems. This technique has limitations in modeling the context of a system, in relating systems involved in a same business process, in reusing use cases, and in specifying various constraints such as execution constraints between use case occurrences. These limitations can be overcome to some extent by the realization of multiple diagrams of various types, but with unclear relationships between them. Thus, the specification activity becomes complex and error prone. In this paper, we show how to overcome the limitations of use cases by making the roles of actors explicit. Interestingly, our contributions not only make UML a more expressive specification language, they also make it simpler to use and more consistent

Accessing OSI Managed Objects from ANSAware

This paper presents a mechanism allowing an ODP compliant distributed system, ANSA, to access OSI network management objects as if they were ANSA objects. It defines a mapping from the OSI object model to the ANSA object model, and it specifies how an adapter implements this mapping

Role is an <X>, a Foundation for the Concept of Role

Standardization experts in object modelling are having difficulties with defining the concept of role; for example, they are not sure of whether role is a type or an instance concept. This issue is a source of confusion in the UML standard, and prevents ISO experts to reach consensus and finalize a language for ODP enterprise modelling. In this paper, we make an in-depth analysis of the problem, find its likely causes, and come up with a proposal for a new ODP definition of role, as well as with definitions of related concepts. We expect our definitions and our results not only to achieve consensus among ISO delegates, but also to be a basis for improving the UML standard and related software engineering processes

Managing ANSA Objects with OSI Network Management Tools

OSI Network Management provides a general framework for the management of OSI systems, and by extension of any distributed system. However, as this model is not well-adapted for the management of software components, distributed programming environments (e.g. DCE, CORBA, ANSAware) essentially ignore the OSI Network Management model. We assume nevertheless that OSI Network managers will want to have some control of a distributed infrastructure and application. We examine how access to some of the ANSA (distributed programming environment) objects can be given to OSI Network managers. An implementation of an ANSA-OSI adapter is then presented

Proposal for a formal foundation of RM-ODP concepts

This paper presents an approach for formalizing the RM-ODP (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing), an ISO and ITU standard. The goal of this formalization is to clarify the RM-ODP modeling framework to make it more accessible to modelers such as system architects, designers and implementers, while opening the way for the formal verification of RM-ODP models, either within an ODP viewpoint or across multiple ODP viewpoints. Our formalization is based on set theory and the usual predicate logic, and is ex-pressed in the Alloy language