Multiperspective Development Environment for Configurable Distributed Applications

A configurable distributed application is an application that can be executed transparently across networks of heterogeneous computers and can be changed dynamically to suit the tasks at hand. The application potentially provides good performance, reliability, availability, flexibility and extendibility. These are derived from geographical component distribution, resource sharing, data replication, parallel execution and evolution support in the application. Although the benefits from configurable distributed applications are numerous, they come at the expense of increasing complexity in their development. This complexity is mainly due to the large volume of information and requirements which form the concerns during the development process. Given the level of complexity, it is not practical to apply a single description or model to construct such an application. Therefore, it becomes necessary to facilitate the separation of concerns in the construction. As an alternative, we could develop a configurable distributed application through multiple perspectives, or ÔmultiperspectivesÕ for short. A perspective represents a particular way in which an individual describes or models the artefacts of the system under consideration. Jus