Method of generating a software application

Abstract: The invention concerns the generation of software application that can be applied to several different target platforms. A software application is described by two separated, platform independent descriptions of said application, a computational description (CD) describing the structure and semantic of said application in a platform independent way and an engineering description (ED) describing the implementation principles of said application in a platform independent way. Both of said two separated descriptions (CD, ED) are used to map the application onto a target platform (TP) by means of a respective target platform profile.

Description: This invention concerns a method for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms according to claim 1, a device for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms according to claim 11, a program module containing a software application according to claim 12 and a data processing unit controlled by a software application according to claim 13. Software is created by means of a development process. Such a design method for deriving software from a user model is described in the European Patent Application EP 0 540 487. Normally, application software is generated and encoded closely related to the respective target platform, on top of which this application will later be executed. The programmer has to take into account the application programming interface (API) of the target platform and he has to choose the platform dependent means and functional principles to implement the execution principles of his application. He has therefore for example to consider the mechanisms of the operation systems (UNIX, Windows NT, ...) of the target platform. This approach has the disadvantage, that the description of the application produced by the programmer is dependent on the respective platform and can therefore not be automatically be transformed to another target platform. If the application has to be executed on another platform, a totally new description of the application has to be encoded by the programmer. Another drawback of this approach is, that the programmer requires knowledge of the platform specifics, which he cannot reuse when he has to encode programs for other target platforms. Further, there already exist some standards and products (OMG/CORBA, ... ) that allow an object oriented, platform independent design of application software. These standards and tools are mainly used for generating software applications that are of higher complexity, which is for example the case in the telecommunications field. In such a object oriented design description of an application the functions of the application are described by a plurality of interaction objects. If the application is realized with a CORBA product (CORBA = Common Object Request Broker Architecture), the specification of the interaction between objects is done by means of the IDL language. This description is translated to source code written in a programming language, which allows to ensure distribution transparency at the programming level. But other platform implementation aspects have still to be managed by the programmer. Therefore, the drawbacks mentioned for the above approach still exists. As described above it is necessary for realizing an application on an platform to pass through a whole software design process. The problem is to reduce development efforts for realizing application for multiple platforms. Accordingly, it is a primary objective of the present invention to de-couple in the software design process an application from the underlying target platform at the design but also at the programming level. This de-coupling is done by introducing a a computational description for the structure and semantic of said application and an engineering description for the implementation principles in terms of encapsulation and resource allocation of said application, both in a platform independent way. This de-coupling is followed by realizing or programming both descriptions, independently. De-coupling the engineering steps in such a way allows to divide implementation complexity by focusing an application implementor via providing the respective (platform independent) framework. The integration of these descriptions is uniform with respect to an arbitrary platform, thus could be made mechanical which reduces the portation effort. This objective is solved by a method for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms according to the teaching of claim 1, a device for generating a software application that can be applied for several different target platforms according to the teaching of claim 11, a program module implementing a software application according to the teaching of claim 12 and a data processing unit controlled by a software application according to the teaching of claim 13. The underlying idea, this invention is based on, is to separate the "what has to be done" from the "how it has to be done" and describe these two thing's platform independently in two separated descriptions, a computational description and an engineering description. These two descriptions are then used to map the application onto the respective target platform. This new approach has following advantages: It ensures the portability of application architecture and of the application code. The programmer does not have to take care on the API of the target platform. It is possible to reconfigure an application without change the application code. By separation of the configuration aspects, that are part of the engineering description, from the objects and interfaces descriptions and code, that are part of the computational description, flexibility is gained and you be able to change the configuration without having to change the objects and interfaces descriptions and code. Therefore, by using this new approach the development and evolution costs of an application and time to market of an application are reduced. Other advantageous embodiments of the invention are described in the subclaims. It's especially advantageous to integrate characteristics into the computational and in the engineering description to ensure a good mapping and the use of the most adapted mechanisms of the target platform and to answer the needs set by the technological field of the application, for example to answer telecommunication application needs. The characteristics added in both separated descriptions have an implementation on the target platform. The characteristics in the descriptions that requires the knowledge of the platform for the mapping and execution are taken into account by generation tools and an executive support. This executive support takes care of ensuring satisfaction of the characteristics and the user does not need to know the platform specifics. The present invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein Fig. 1 is a block diagram presenting the architecture of a program module according to the invention. Fig. 2 is an illustration presenting a part of an engineering description. Fig. 3 illustrates a flowchart presenting the processing of a method for generation of a software application according to the invention. Fig. 1 shows a software architecture model with an application level L1, a support level L2 and a platform level L3. The application level L1 contains two different, separated description, a computational description CD and an engineering description ED. With these both descriptions the application is described in a platform independent way. The platform level contains a target platform TP. This target platform has a platform specific application programming interface. The support level L2 maps the application described by the computational description CD and the engineering description ED on the target platform TP. The support level L2 hides the target platform specifics and manages ist resources, like distribution, communication, threads.. . It is possible that this mapping is supported by tools associated to the support level L2. Therefore, a program module implementing an application has the following architecture: The program module contains the computational description CD and the engineering description ED, that describe the application in a platform independent way. Further it contains software modules of the support level, that provide the mapping of these two descriptions onto the target platform TP. If the application should be transformed to another target platform, only these software modules have to be changed. In a preferable embodiment of the invention these software modules of the support level are generated from the two descriptions ED and CD and from a respective target platform profile. This is an efficient way to generate a well-adapted support level L2. In the following an embodiment of the invention is described in more detail: The computational description CD holds the abstract notions necessary to describe the structure and the semantics of an application in terms that are not directly bound to a particular technology. In a preferable embodiment the descriptions CD and ED are based on an object model. An object model embodies the ideas of modularity and data encapsulation that are useful for structuring and reusability purposes. For creating the computational description CD, the object has to be abstracted from the direct platform issues. A collection of object classes and the relation between them has to be described. As example for the objects described in the computational description two objects OB1 and OB1 are shown in Fig. 1. Objects are described platform independently in two different description's ways: An interaction view description IVD and a design view description DVD. The interaction view description IVD describes the interface of an object with the rest of the application, that is what service it offers to the rest of the application. The interaction view description IVD of an object interface contains: the definition of supporting types for defining operations the signature of each operation that can be invoked by clients of an interface of that type The interaction view description IVD follows the RPC model (RPC=Remote Procedure Call). The type of interactions is part of the specification of each operation. Two basic types of interactions are supported: interrogation or notification. If more application requirement has to be taken into account additional interaction types can be introduced. As language for describing the object interaction view description IVD a language IDL is used. This language IDL is for example the CORBA/IDL language or a subset of the CORBA/IDL language. The design view description DVD defines the internal layout of the object, that is, the information that guides both the implementors of the functional encoding and the support software for the support level L2. In the design view description DVD the focus is on the object definition and on its internal structure. This includes the interface that the object provides to the outside world. In this description it's advantageous to assign to an object class one or more non-functional characteristics that are relevant to its implementation. Such characteristics can be: interfaces from other objects that are used, supported interfaces, administrative interfaces to manage the object life-cycle execution profile including concurrence and behavioral characteristics (a execution profile is a predefined model of execution whose properties are well known), quality of service constraints data persistency. If the description of such non-functional and quality of service properties is sufficiently rich and accurate, the choice of an execution profile can be automated. Having only a limited set of execution profiles allows to master the complexity of the platform programming and to ensure the efficiency of the object implementation. As language for describing the design view description DVD a language ODL is used. As language ODL an expand version of the existing language ODL/CORBA (ODL=Object Description Language) can be used, that contain additional syntax for assigning the above mentioned characteristics. To finish the description of an object class, the programmer has to code or describe the operations of the object class. This is preferably be done after the design view description D1 and the interaction view description D2 are fully described. By doing this, the computational description CD for the objects OB1 and OB2 is finished. The characteristics of an object class are ensured by the support level L2. Therefore, the programmer has not take them into account. He has for example not to care about thread management. He can concentrate on the interactions with the other objects (instance creation , operation invocation and instance destruction). The engineering description ED addresses the describing of the implementation principles of the application. These information's are necessary towards the concretization of the computational abstract notions that has to be initiated on the target platform. Whereas the computational description CD focus on individual object design issues, the engineering description ED addresses architectural issues and in particular "how" the "what" will be done. The application is now viewed as a collection of object instances. The engineering description describes for example issues of placement (what will be local, what will be remoted) or grouping of service instances into units of execution resource allocation (that will be later mapped to platform concepts such as processes). Following main notions are used to describe the engineering description: A capsule is an abstraction of a resource provision unit. Object instances are grouped into capsules. Characteristics are assigned to a capsule that describe its behavior. These characteristics are for example the assignment of engineering threads and queues. A node represents the entity that actually provides physical execution resources, it refers to a single computer or station Recovery: in case the application is not able to pursue its computation because there is for example a system or an applicative problem, parameters are assigned that initiating the recovery of a part of it. The smallest unit of recovery is a capsule. An object instance can be statically or dynamically created activated deactivated and destroyed through a factory service. Figure 2 shows an example of a part of such an engineering description. It shows 3 capsules C1 to C3, containing object instances OI. The object instances OI are distributed into the capsules C1 to C3 and each of the capsules C1 to C3 are dimensioned according to the implementation principles of the application. The capsule C1 is assigned to the handling of a call. It contains several different interaction object instances directed to signaling, charging, call managing and CNX managing. The capsules C2 and C3 contains several subscriber object instances. Further, according to implementation principles of the application the above mentioned characteristics and parameters are assigned to the capsules C1 to C3 and an assignment is specified that map the capsules C1 to C3 to the available nodes. The engineering description ED is described by means of a configuration description language CDL. The applicative objects that have been described by the computational description CD are mapped onto the target platform TP. Both descriptions, the computational description CD and the engineering description ED are used to choose the most suitable mechanisms of the target platform. There is not only an intermediate layer, the support layer L2, put on top of the platform, but this intermediate layer is generated from the two descriptions CD, ED in such a way, that the best advantage's for its regarding application characteristics is taken. The use of platform functionality and inner mechanisms of the platform are completely controlled by the support level L2. Advantageous, the translation from the computational description CD and the engineering description ED to the platform programming interface of the target platform TP is done at software production time and not at runtime. This is done by using a respective target platform profile well suited to the target platform TP. Because of the complete description of the semantic, structure and implementation principles, mapping rules can be precisely defined for every target platform and can be stored in a target platform profile. The support level comprising a generic runtime GM, a plurality of object support modules OS1 and OS2 and a capsule support module CS. The object support modules OS1 and OS2 and the capsule support module CS make the link between the two descriptions of ED and CD and the generic runtime GM. The object support modules OS1 and OS2 are generated from the computational description CD. The support modules OS1 and OS2 take care, that the characteristics of the object class are respected and implemented on the target platform TP. The capsule support module CS is generated from the engineering description ED. It takes care on the implementation principles and makes the mapping of these implementation principles on platform concepts like processes and software components and to generate automatically the respective services. The generic runtime GM is independent from the application. It includes operations like communication, the thread management, ..... It uses the target platform specificities to manage the distribution, the platform resources, the communications between object instances, the recovery, ... The runtime GM implements the execution profiles specified in the design description of the objects. It includes the instance concurrence control, the thread management inside a capsule and the choice of internal communication mechanisms. Further, the runtime GM makes the interfaces with the platform, the management of the instances life-cycle, the management of the data persistency and of the recovery of active instances in case of crash failure. The generation of a platform independent application is now demonstrated according to Fig. 3. Fig. 3 shows 4 application description steps D1 to D4, 3 compilation steps COMP1 to COMP3, the support modules CS, OS1 and OS2 and two mapping profiles MP1 and MP2. In the description steps D1 and D2 the design view description DVD and interaction view description IVD of the objects of the application are inputted and memorized. In the description step D3 the engineering description ED is inputted and memorized. The memorized design view description DVD and interaction view description IVD of the objects of the application are translated, after performing consistency checks, in the compilation step COMP1 into a programming language. In the description step D4 a description of the operations of the objects is inputted. This description is written in said programming language and filled in the position determined by the translated design view description DVD and interaction view description IVD of the objects. This detail computational description CD is then memorized. In the compilation step COMP2 the engineering description ED is translated, after performing consistency checks, into the support module CS that contain all material required to build up the application: source files, make files or equivalent. In the compilation step COMP3 the computational description CD is translated into the support modules OS1 and OS2. This compilation steps takes into account the mapping profiles MP1 and MP2. The mapping profile MP1 is the runtime GM and the mapping profile MP2 are the target platform liberies.

Claims: A method for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms, said method comprising the steps of determining a primary user goal, deriving a sub-goal structure, conceptual specification, functional specification, and implementation, characterized by comprising the further steps of de-coupling said application into a computational description (CD) describing the structure and semantic of said application in a platform independent way and an engineering description (ED) describing the implementation principles in terms of encapsulation and resource allocation of said application in a platform independent way, implementing the engineering description (ED) in a platform independent way, implementing the computational description (CD) in a platform independent way, and mapping the application onto one of said several target platforms (TP) by means of a respective target platform profile and of both of said two separated descriptions (CD, ED). The method according to claim 1, characterized by further including the step of memorizing the computational description (CD) and the engineering description (ED) based on abstract notions. The method according to claim 1, characterized by further including the step of memorizing the engineering description (ED) as a description of interacting objects. The method according to claim 1, characterized by further including the steps of memorizing of one or several non-functional characteristics in the computational description (CD) and using that characteristics for the mapping and the selection of the best adapted mechanisms of said target platform (TP). The method according to the claims 3 and 4, characterized by further including the step of memorizing a description (DVD) of a plurality of said interacting object respectively assigned one or several of said non-functional characteristics describing the non-functional behavior of the respective interacting object. The method according to claim 1, characterized by further including the steps of memorizing of one or several characteristics in the engineering description (ED) and using said characteristics for the mapping and the use of the best adapted mechanisms of said target platform (TP). The method according to the claims 3 and 6, characterized by further including the step of memorizing a description of grouping of instances of said interacting objects (OI) and a description of an assignment between a group of object instances (C1 to C3) and a specific group characteristic. The method according to claim 1, characterized by further including the step of generating one or several executive support modules (OS1, OS2, CS) out of the computational description (CD) and the engineering description (ED), which controls the execution of the application together with a (generic) runtime (GS) implementing platform independent runtime parts. The method according to claim 8, characterized by further including the step of generating separated executive support modules (OS1, OS2; CS) out of the computational description (CD) and the engineering description (ED), respectively, which link the computational description (CD) and the engineering description (ED) with the generic runtime (GS), respectively. The method according to the claims 4, 6 and 8, characterized by further including the step of generating the executive support modules (OS1, OS2, CS) in such a way that the executive support modules (OS1, OS2, CS) selects by means of the generic runtime (GS) proper mechanisms of the target platform (TP) to satisfy the characteristics of the application described in the computational description (CD) and in the engineering description (ED). A device for generating a software application that can be applied to several different target platforms, said device, characterized by containing first inputting means for inputting a computational description (CD) describing the structure and semantic of said application in a platform independent way, second inputting means for inputting an engineering description (ED) describing the implementation principles of said application in a platform independent way, programming means for programming the engineering description (ED) in a platform independent way, programming means for programming the computational description (CD) in a platform independent way, memory means for memorizing said computational description and said engineering description as two separated, platform independent descriptions of said application, and generating means for generating by means of both of said two separated descriptions (CD, ED) and of a target platform profile an executive support (OS1, OS2, CS, GS) that maps the application onto a respective one of said several target platforms (TP). A program module implementing a software application, said program module containing two separated, platform independent descriptions of said application, a computational description (CD) describing the structure and semantic of said application in a platform independent way and a engineering description (ED) describing the implementation principles of said application in a platform independent way, and containing mapping means (OS1, OS2, CS, GS) for mapping the application described by said two separated descriptions (CD, ED) onto a target platform (TP). A data processing unit controlled by a software application, said data processing unit containing two separated, platform independent descriptions of said application, a computational description (CD) describing the structure and semantic of said application in a platform independent way and a engineering description (ED) describing the implementation principles of said application in a platform independent way, and containing mapping means (OS1, OS2, CS, GS) for mapping the application described by said two separated descriptions (CD, ED) onto a target platform (TP).

Inventors: DELCOURT CHRISTINE, DIEHL-WARTRIN CLAIRE, HUON JEAN-ROBERT, RICHARD PHILIPPE, DELCOURT, CHRISTINE, DIEHL-WARTRIN, CLAIRE, HUON, JEAN-ROBERT, RICHARD, PHILIPPE
Applicants: CIT ALCATEL, ALCATEL
Application year: 1997
Main classification: G06F9
IPC codes: G06F9