Towards reuse and recycling of active components
Aiming to keep Europe ahead in the highly competitive technology sector, the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) arm of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme funds cutting edge projects. EASYCOMP is one such project that aspired to develop the means for reuse and recycling of active components in software development. The EASYCOMP consortium, designed a multi-stage approach to component management. The first step employs Compression-Based Reasoning (CBR), which is comparable to the definition of technical specifications common to most IT projects. The adaptation of model-checking of traditional systems to component-based systems is central to CBR. This is aided by the Component Verifier (CoV) tool, which handles state grouping, hierarchy, compression and other aspects. As most systems include distributed components, the next stage addresses the specific needs evolving from such systems. New methods had to be invented and applied in order to ensure seamless, robust operation. The solution came in the form of protocols and protocol checking from an EASYCOMP partner They created the Transactional Component Protocol Language (TCPL) and CoTaP (Composition of Transaction Protocols) tool to manage the protocols. The EASYCOMP consortium is seeking additional funding and partnerships to further the development of this approach and its tools.