HP Labs Technical Reports

System Factory: Integrating Tools for System Integration

Kotov, Vadim

HPL-1999-118

Keyword(s): system integration; system modeling; system analysis; customization; simulation; analytic modeling; Petri Nets; Communicating Structures; System Factory

Abstract: Large highly distributed systems such as multi-tier server farms, global enterprise systems, E-commerce and E-service systems are both critical for businesses and complex and expensive to build and run. Their design requires an advanced technology of system integration that guarantees satisfaction of various customer requirements such as cost/performance, high availability, recoverability, security, etc. This report advocates a shift from uncoordinated tools, which are developed independently to address specific tasks, to integrated environments that incorporate various system analysis techniques and tools and may be customized for the design of such IT systems that fully satisfies the whole spectrum of customer requirements. The functionality and structure of a System Factory prototype is described in the report. The center of the factory is a Repository that accumulates system solutions, patterns, and templates for specific business segments. Specialized Shops with a common modeling and analysis base provide convenient means to find customized solutions. Communicating Structures, a uniform and systematic representation of large systems as hierarchical, distributed, and communicating subsystems and components, provides this common base.

22 Pages

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