Introduction
There has been a continuing trend in the development of software applications away from
closed, proprietary systems towards so-called open systems. This trend can be largely attributed
to the rapid advances in computer hardware technology that have vastly increased
the computational power available to end-user applications. With new possibilities come
new needs: in order to survive, competitive businesses must be able to effectively exploit
new technology as it becomes available, so existing applications must be able to work with
new, independently developed systems. We can see, then, that open systems must be
“open” in at least three important ways:
1. Topology: open applications run on configurable networks.
2. Platform: the hardware and software platforms are heterogeneous.
3. Evolution: requirements are unstable and constantly change.
Tags: Object Oriented Software
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