A.2. Component Interoperability Challenge

In the development of large-scale distributed systems, there is a recurring need for teams of developers to share information about systems. Architecture mismatch is the term made popular by the Software Engineering Institute to describe the pervasive incompatibilities between the architectures of software systems [Garlan 95]. This problem is also an artifact of the increasing use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software in application systems. Multivendor solutions are the norm for both legacy and distributed object environments.

Today, corporate software development organizations must support COTS products from hundreds of suppliers. Managing the compatibility relationships between numerous COTS products is a significant and costly problem in most medium to large corporations. The increasing frequency of software releases from COTS vendors exacerbates this problem for software developers.

The TRRS is an initiative that attempts to resolve these challenges. Today, software developers perform a great deal of in-house testing of COTS products in an attempt to resolve these issues. The TRRS would enable software developers to share testing and development experiences about successful configurations of software products. In addition, technology suppliers could participate in the clearinghouse by integrating their web presence and product information.

A complex, multienterprise system like the TRRS requires significant architectural planning, including the use of design patterns, architectural styles, and modeling tools. We describe here the part of the architecture involving UML case studies and initial Java prototyping. The sections that follow describe the target architecture for the TRRS's Internet presence; then the initial prototype is discussed.