Patent ID: 7231641

Claim:
A computer readable medium containing a computer program executable by a computer for managing a family of component systems within a medical diagnostic system and having a shared family architecture based upon commonly used generic building blocks of software, wherein said family of component systems include at least one system selected from the group consisting of application, technical and infrastructure components of an X-ray apparatus, said computer program comprising instructions for implementing: a service component framework that comprises a skeleton of software architecture that supports participating software plug-in components; said participating software plug-in components that each provide one or more services, wherein the one or more services correspond to one or more functionalities specific to the corresponding software plug-in component, further wherein the one or more functionalities include aspects of use and control of the application, technical and infrastructure components of the X-ray apparatus that are modeled as the one or more services; and roles defined by the service component framework for providing one or more common interfaces for communication of said services of several said software plug-in components, wherein the service component framework is further configured for actively connecting said common interfaces of said software plug-in components and providing, via respective said roles, the functionality of the interfaces to clients, the clients being configured for using the functionality provided by the service component framework and said software plug-in components as a whole, without the service component framework revealing specific configurations of the software plug-in components to the client.