Towards a Formal Semantics of a Composition Language

Although several composition environments exist that are built on top of object-oriented languages, they fail to supply the level of abstraction required to specify compositions of components. There is therefore a need for pure component-based languages in order to allow the composition developer to focus on the composition from a clear viewpoint, free of any obscurities imposed by existing programming languages that essentially operate at the individual component level. In this paper we make a clear distinction between a composition language and a composition representation. A composition language is any language that allows the specification of a piece of software in terms of its composition whereas a composition representation is the abstract, general, architectural description of a composition. This position paper sets out to formally express the basis for a composition representation. The definition of an abstract representation is necessary in order to derive the formal semantics of a composition language. We believe that this semantic definition should be the initial step in the construction of a high level component-based language.