SoftBean Composer: a visual environment for component assembly

In this paper, we describe a visual environment, SoftBean Composer, for component assembly. Key ideas of this visual environment include explicit representation of component boundary elements based on a component model and explicit separation of core component functionality from inter-component communication mechanisms and strategies. Component boundary elements are abstracted into Ports dealing with communications between component internal parts and the outside world. Inter-component communications are abstracted into Links dealing with communications in local or distributed fashions. Component boundary information is discovered using introspection at component assembly time and assistance is provided to users in component assembly.