WhiteCat includes the concept of role descriptors it inherited from its precedessor, BlackCat.
A role descriptor is a layer of meta-information around a specific role implementation. The idea is that an agent can deal with a role descriptor in order to see what the role aims are, which operations the role provides and which events each operation will generated and/or receive. As readers can see, a role descriptor is not a single complex and big object, but a set of nested small objects each one tied to a specific piece of role information. This means that a role will have a RoleDescriptor as its top descriptive object, and the latter will contain one or more OperationDescriptor, that in turn can contain one or more EventDescriptor. This is the structure of role descriptors in BlackCat, that has been rewritten almost equally in WhiteCat.
In the last couple of commits I've changed this structure to a more flexible and powerful one. First of all, a role descriptor does not have anymore operation descriptors, but "task descriptors". A task descriptor describes a task (e.g., a method call). Most interesting is the Task itself, an interface to allow the composition of method calls and other tasks in order to obtain a very complex executional unit. Having the task abstraction, a role description now contains pure executable objects that will do a method call (or a method call chain) on a specific role. The task descriptor is useful to allow the agent to better understand the meaning of a task and to select it before it is executed. So the main difference between the BlackCat role descriptors and the WhiteCat ones is that in the new version the role descriptor contains also executable code as a task definition, as well as its description. The event descriptor has been kept unchanged, except that since the first version of WhiteCat it explicitly specifies if the event is incoming or outgoing.
A task can be executed or composed with another task, and this allows for a great reusability as well as modularity.
Another importan change is that now WhiteCat allows for annotation based descriptors: the role developer can annotate his role with special annotations in order to allow the system to infer the role descriptor automatically. The system now includes a interface, called IRoleDescriptorBuilder, that can analyze a role implementation (IRole) and create the descriptor depending on the annotation values.
This integration has several advantages, the most important of which is that the developer can write a single file (the role class implementation) letting the system to infer the role descriptor and the tasks. Of course, this can be overridden by a formal role descriptor expressed, for instance, as XML.
A role descriptor is a layer of meta-information around a specific role implementation. The idea is that an agent can deal with a role descriptor in order to see what the role aims are, which operations the role provides and which events each operation will generated and/or receive. As readers can see, a role descriptor is not a single complex and big object, but a set of nested small objects each one tied to a specific piece of role information. This means that a role will have a RoleDescriptor as its top descriptive object, and the latter will contain one or more OperationDescriptor, that in turn can contain one or more EventDescriptor. This is the structure of role descriptors in BlackCat, that has been rewritten almost equally in WhiteCat.
In the last couple of commits I've changed this structure to a more flexible and powerful one. First of all, a role descriptor does not have anymore operation descriptors, but "task descriptors". A task descriptor describes a task (e.g., a method call). Most interesting is the Task itself, an interface to allow the composition of method calls and other tasks in order to obtain a very complex executional unit. Having the task abstraction, a role description now contains pure executable objects that will do a method call (or a method call chain) on a specific role. The task descriptor is useful to allow the agent to better understand the meaning of a task and to select it before it is executed. So the main difference between the BlackCat role descriptors and the WhiteCat ones is that in the new version the role descriptor contains also executable code as a task definition, as well as its description. The event descriptor has been kept unchanged, except that since the first version of WhiteCat it explicitly specifies if the event is incoming or outgoing.
A task can be executed or composed with another task, and this allows for a great reusability as well as modularity.
Another importan change is that now WhiteCat allows for annotation based descriptors: the role developer can annotate his role with special annotations in order to allow the system to infer the role descriptor automatically. The system now includes a interface, called IRoleDescriptorBuilder, that can analyze a role implementation (IRole) and create the descriptor depending on the annotation values.
This integration has several advantages, the most important of which is that the developer can write a single file (the role class implementation) letting the system to infer the role descriptor and the tasks. Of course, this can be overridden by a formal role descriptor expressed, for instance, as XML.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento