The paper describes the need for and goals of tool-integration within software development processes. In particular we focus on agile software development but are not limited to. The integration of tools and data between the different domains of the process is essential for an efficient, effective and customized software development. We describe what the next steps in the pursuit of integration are and how major goals can be achieved. Beyond theoretical and architectural considerations we describe the prototypical implementation of an open platform approach. The paper introduces platform apps and a functionality store as general concepts to make apps and their functionalities available to the community. We describe the implementation of the approach and how it can be practically utilized. The description is based on one major use case and further steps are motivated by various other examples.
Arguing for the need of continuing with advancing integration technologies, Seligman @cite_1 determine that existing tools --although already advanced-- are still too costly and labor intensive to build. Their solution is presented in form of a platform. The platform consists of a (vendor) model-independent repository, containing model schemas and a mapping of integrated tools, data importing and exporting components and integration tools using the eclipse platform and its plug-in mechanism. Considering the architecture of Seligman , a platform feature for easy and dynamic usage of integrated functionalities and data is still missing.
@cite_1
2050789550
OpenII (openintegration.org) is a collaborative effort to create a suite of open-source tools for information integration (II). The project is leveraging the latest developments in II research to create a platform on which integration tools can be built and further research conducted. In addition to a scalable, extensible platform, OpenII includes industrial-strength components developed by MITRE, Google, UC-Irvine, and UC-Berkeley that interoperate through a common repository in order to solve II problems. Components of the toolkit have been successfully applied to several large-scale US government II challenges.