FrameKit and CPN-AMI

The experience acquired with AMI and remarks from researchers who downloaded the first versions CPN-AMI (1.1 to 1.3 that were based on AMI) brought us to work on a second integration platformgeneration. FrameKit focuses on the definition of simple procedures for customized installation, maintenance and integration of formalisms or tools. FrameKit do respect the architecture principle depicted in [ECMA 91].

We pay a particular attention to the implementation of low level interfaces that enable the migration of both the framework and tools to discrete UNIX system (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX...). Like AMI, it uses the Macao user interface that runs on Macintosh. However, the use of MAE allows one to get a complete set that runs on only one computer. FrameKit provides the following characteristics :

• it supports easy user administration;
• it supports both flat and hierarchical formalisms;
• it runs on discrete architecture (so far, Sun/SunOS and Sun/Solaris).

FrameKit is not a distributed environment : it runs on one only host. An experimental version of this open Framework is currently operational and supports the essential feature that enable the implementation of the Mars method for H-COSTAM and OF-Class.

Tools that are now in CPN-AMI version 2 were first designed and implemented out of FrameKit. Each integration was performed in about one hour. An environment like CPN-AMI is obtained by the addition to the framework of :

• a set of formalisms
• a set of associated tools.

Figure 1 : The integration process in FrameKit.

When the application has been implemented within the FrameKit development environment, the integration process is very short : services offered by the tool have to be registered. When the tool has been implemented outside the FrameKit environment, an adaptation layer has to be designed Figure 1. Event integrated into FrameKit, tools can still be executed outside of the environment (standalone).