Distributed Component Engineering using a Decentralised, Internet-based Environment

Engineering component-based software systems in a distributed fashion is challenging. Particular issues to address include software process and work co-ordination, sharing and collaborative editing of component specifications, designs and implementations, and appropriate sharing of reusable components. This paper describes our approach to tool support for distributed component engineering. Several tools are integrated for each developer, and a decentralised, multi-user work environment established. Key characteristics of this environment include flexible process management and process-based tool co-ordination, collaborative editing support, distributed work co-ordination and 3 party tool integration agents, and distributed component storage and retrieval support. We illustrate some of these tools in use during multi-user development, and discuss the architectural realisation of these tools and their integration.