Towards a Refinement of the Open Distributed Systems Interactions Signatures

The ODP framework defines a set of concepts and an architecture for the construction of ODP systems in terms of five viewpoints. The computational viewpoint supports three models of interaction, each of which has an associated kind of computational interface: signals and signal interfaces, flows and stream interfaces, operations and operation interfaces. In this paper we address both the functional decomposition and constraints specification on interactions signatures. We show how to refine an operation signature into a signal signature. And finally, we use OCL to express constraints on interaction signatures refinements. The result is an UML model which can serve as a basis to define end-to-end QoS in open distributed systems, and the operation of multi-party binding and bindings between different kinds of interfaces (e.g. stream to operation interface bindings). That is, QoS requirements on interactions in the computational viewpoint might be specified just using signals. We are investigating this issue.