Towards a Periodic Table of Connectors

Abstract

Connectors are the glue for combining components and are a critical aspect of software architecture design. Providing a framework similar in spirit to that of the periodic table of chemical elements, this work strives to obtain a set of high level canonical properties that can describe all possible connectors and al- low operations to be defined over them. Connector factorization obtains a new connector characterized by the common subset of primitive properties of a given set of connectors. Also, a connector can be specialized by adding primitive prop- erties to the set that characterizes it. This approach leads us to the notion of connector class. A connector class can be seen as a connector that does not define a criteria for a set of properties, these properties are viewed as optional by the class. In addition, we extend operations of specialization and factorization of connectors over classes. By explicitly defining the set of primitive properties to be included in the periodic table, it is also possible to explore the connec- tor universe by contriving connectors as new combinations of properties. As in Mendeleev's original table, the periodic table of connector properties will require many refinements and additions. For instance, if one can characterize two known distinct connectors with the same set of properties, the table must be revised. Examples of properties that could be included in the initial table are, Broadcast, Reliable, Typed and Synchronous.