We are concerned with the issues faced by software developers with a certain family of distributed applications; those that connect to and interoperate with a heterogeneous infrastructure, i.e., a large heterogeneous collection of external systems (databases, embedded devices, network equipment, internet servers etc.) using different communication protocols. This product family includes applications such as e-commerce systems, network management applications and Grid-based collaborations. For such applications, implementing the interoperation logic is both challenging and expensive. We discuss the major concerns that contribute to the problem, such as transaction support, security and management, as well as integration with workflow or component frameworks. We propose an architecture and related development methodology, based on generative programming, to reduce implementation complexity, allow for rapid application development, ease deployment and manageability.
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