Static and Dynamic Visualisation of Software Architectures for Component-based Systems

Component-based software architectures are increasingly being adopted as solutions for various software engineering problems. We describe a component-based software architecture and its supporting CASE tool we have been developing. Our tool supports both static and dynamic visualisation of component-based systems, together with end-user configuration of such systems by user extension of these visualisations. We describe the application of this tool to the development of component-based design environments, focusing on visualisations developed when specifying a process modelling tool. 1. Introduction Component-based software architectures are becoming more common as software developers realise these have greater potential for improved reusability, robustness and end-user configuration than conventional software systems. Example domains include user interfaces, databases, client-server architectures, design tools and visualisation tools. The central idea of component-based software arch...