3CoFramework: A Component-based Framework for Distributed Applications ⁄

The software engineering community has introduced component and connector concepts to support architecture-based software descriptions. However, there still exists a gap in transitioning component and connector concepts from the design level to the implementation level. This paper proposes a framework which can implement components and connectors based on the separation of three types of meta-information of a component: interface information, composition information, and instance information. With the proposed framework, architects and developers can get a clear architectural view of a component-based distributed application, and flexibly implement and maintain it. The National Agricultural Decision Support System (NADSS), a component-based distributed decision support system, is discussed as a case study to illustrate the framework.