Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS)/Legacy systems integration architectural design and analysis

Abstract

The nature of COTS products often fall short of achieving the unique requirements of the Department of Defense (DoD). The focus of this thesis is on the use of distributed component middleware technology within the framework of integrating COTS/Legacy system architecture. One of the main problems facing distributed computing is software component integration. There is no single, standardized framework for achieving component integration. However, technologies such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) are emerging as solutions to component integration. These methodologies provide a sort of software communications bus for components, supporting platform and language independence. A case study developed within the Navy Integrated Tactical Environmental System I (NITES I) architecture was used to show the integration and communication of COTS/Legacy software components using distributed component technology. This resulted in a distributed object architecture supporting location, platform, and programming language transparencies.