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Connector Type

Description

Components interact with other components in a system in very distinct ways. These distinctions separate component interactions (i.e., connections) into classes, or types. A connector type captures the semantics of a class of interactions, assertions about that class, and the responsibilities and requirements that players in components must satisfy in an interaction from the class.

A connector type expresses the designer's intention about the general class of connection to be provided by the connector; it restricts the numbers, types, and specifications of properties and roles. In particular some properties may or may not be required for a given connector type; additionally, some roles may require associations with players, some may not require them but constrain them if present, and some may be restricted to match players of certain types.

Every connector definition has a type. In UniCon, there are seven pre-defined connector types. The specification of the type comes as the first UniCon statement inside a connector protocol.

Syntax

The following is the syntax for specifying a connector type:

  <connector_type> :== 
    DataAccess
    | FileIO
    | Pipe
    | PLBundler
    | ProcedureCall
    | RemoteProcCall
    | RTScheduler

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Author: Gregory Zelesnik

Last Modified: May 12, 1996