Patent ID: 7779383

Claim:
A method of modeling a component-based, distributed application, wherein the method is performed by computer executable instructions executing on a processor, the method comprising: modeling of a plurality of components of the application, wherein a component includes a software service or module, a computational device, or communications middleware, each model of a component including an interface to other model components, the interface characterized by one or more model interface ports, the model interface ports describing communication technologies and protocols used by the component to communicate with one or more other components, wherein the modeling includes generating the of model interface ports for the models of the components of the component-based application; modeling end-to-end communications concepts of the endpoint class components at ends of a communications pathway through interlinked components, wherein an endpoint class component is a component at an endpoint of a network layer addressing scheme for the communications pathway; modeling a plan for interlinking the components of the application; modeling communications capabilities of a compound component composed of a plurality of constituent components, wherein the modeling of the communications capabilities of a compound component includes merging models of interface ports of the constituent components and modeling communication capabilities of types of components; and determining if the interlinked components are compatible to communicate validly in the application, wherein the determination includes determining if the communication technologies modeled by the types of components are compatible.