Grammar-Oriented Object Design: Creating Adaptive Collaborations and Dynamic Configurations with Self-Describing Components and Services

The configuration and collaboration of software components in software architecture are designed to adaptively conform to a set of business requirements that often need to be updated to reflect changing business needs and models. Altering collaboration sequences, business rules and processes within applications often create unacceptable maintenance overhead in a tight delivery window where the constraints of high quality software need to be balanced with (and is sometimes compromised for) rapid time-to-market. Thus, we identify three major new characteristics that are needed to fulfill the demands of component-based software engineering today and hence-forth; namely, a) dynamic [re-] configuration based on business domain languages, b) component manners to manage collaboration and c) self-description that defines the context and abilities of a component that can be queried without violating encapsulation. We explore how Grammar-oriented Object design (GOOD), facilitates the creation of software enterprise component architectures that realize the three characteristics.