VISUAL APPLICATION PARTITIONING FOR CREATING DISTRIBUTED OBJECT ORIENTED APPLICATIONS

摘要

A software partitioning tool is disclosed. Based on a visual display of an application that shows program objects and the connections or interactions between the objects, an internal representation of the application is defined. As the user interacts with the visual display of the application, creating new partitions and relocating program objects in the new partitions, the internal representation of the display is constantly updated. Once a connection between program objects crossespartition boundaries, it is redefined in the internal representation as a distributed interaction (a connection), and representative server and client stubs are defined. At a number of points, the user also has the opportunity to set middleware protocols. Once the user commits to a distribution design, a code generator in the tool generates the actual server and client stubs for all distributed connections based on the definitions in the internal representation of the application.