Active Behavioral Interfaces for Seamless Network Integration

The project addresses basic challenges in seamless integration of software solutions for heterogeneous net, by proposing a meta-infrastructure for environment awareness based on a novel notion of Active Behavioral Interfaces. This notion of active behavi oral interfaces will enable software components without environmental awareness to function seamlessly in different environments. More specifically, the active behavioral interface of a component will perform filtering, adaptation and conversion of incom ing data, allowing the component to understand inputs intended for other kinds of components, and furthermore, perform adjustment and adaptation of outgoing data, allowing the quantity and quality of outgoing messages and message streams to depend on the environment. In particular, the capacity and bandwidth of net connections are taken into consideration. A meta-infrastructure will separate the design of active behavioral interfaces from that of the components themselves, and include a rich language fo r describing networks of different kinds. The meta-infrastructure will involve monitoring of the network traffic, and thereby provide information about the net to the component interfaces. The project will focus on the modeling and design level, buildin g a framework for high level programming and analysis of components, interfaces and networks. The concepts will be explored, formalized, and implemented by tools oriented towards executable specifications, simulation, prototyping, model checking and anal ysis. Components and interfaces are described in an object-oriented manner, designing program structures useful for production level software solutions.