Compframe 2005

Atlanta, GA, June 22-23, 2005

Port Monitor: A Monitoring & Debugging Approach For Component Frameworks.
Torsten Wilde and James A. Kohl
Abstract
This paper discusses the concept of port monitors for debugging component-based software applications for the high performance Common Component Architecture (CCA) framework. CCA defines lightweight and less intrusive frameworks then non-scientific component based systems in order to maximize the application performance. CCA-compliant frameworks can be used across different application domains and have support for components written in a variety of languages used in scientific computing today. Because of that complexity component applications are hard to debug using traditional methods. Port monitoring is the idea of inserting a specialized port monitoring component between component interface ports. This Port Monitor component collects traces of all port invocations and transferred data between two components, taking advantage of the well-defined code separation in these components. By doing so it enables language-neutral debugging and allows the user to find and isolate faulty components, to simulate their invocation for specific debugging, to check port method data argument boundaries and to create files for black-box testing.
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