An Architecture for Three Challenging Features

The ECLIPSE project shows how concerns related to the complex behavior of telecommunication systems can be separated from concerns related to the IP implementation of that behavior. Within this context, the behavioral problems of Location and Identification, Switching and Spontaneous Conferencing, and Mail are addressed. Each of these features is challenging because it is not clear which functions should be included within its boundary, because it encompasses many possible behavioral variations and conflicting requirements, because it interacts with many other features, and because (like all features) it must be extensible. For each feature, the paper proposes a boundary and presents an architecture for performing all the functions within the boundary, with all their behavioral variations. The paper also shows how the composition of these feature architectures is extensible and reveals potential feature interactions. Bad feature interactions can be prevented, and good feature interactions preserved, by minor adjustments to the feature composition. Keywords— multimedia telecommunication services, requirements, feature interaction, user interfaces, personal mobility, conferencing, mail