A Notation for Component-Based Design of Java Applications

In this paper we present JTN2 (Java Targeted Notation 2) a notation for component-based design of Java applications. JTN2 defines a component model based on the fundamental object-oriented principles: abstraction, encapsulation, modularization and typing. Indeed, JTN2 is an extension of JTN, an object-oriented, formal, visual notation for designing concurrent Java applications. JTN2 component model aims to deal with three issues of Java based component development: component definition, component interconnection and component implementation in Java. JTN2 allows a component to be described, understood and analyzed independently from other components. Pre-designed components are interconnected to form complete systems. JTN2 provides a static type system that checks if two components can be interconnected. Java code can be, then, generated automatically by taking advantage of multiple Java technologies, e.g., JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans and JINI