Platform Model

A software platform is a set of generic capabilities implemented in software which enable and facilitate the creation and operation of applications. A general-purpose software platform does not make specific assumptions about the nature of the applications that it supports. SPIRIT is not concerned with hardware architectures; indeed SPIRIT presumes that the software platforms it describes are implementable on a variety of hardware architectures.

An application is software that is developed for a specific purpose, using the generic capabilities provided by the platform. (Thus platform and application make sense only in relation to each other.)

The SPIRIT software platform comprises programming languages and the following services¹:

• Operating System Services (OS)

  Manages the fundamental physical and processing resources of a given machine.

• Management Services (MGMT)

  Effects the changes of managed items on the platform.

• Presentation Services (PRES)

  Acts as the mediator between the system and human user interface devices (display, keyboard, mouse, and so on).

• Data Management Services (DMS)

  Manages persistent storage. Also presumes some kind of data model. ISAM and relational DBMSs are examples of data management services.

• Transaction Services (TXN)

  Coordinates resources in order to maintain transactional integrity over those data resources. In order to do this, updates are applied in units of work called transactions.

• Communications Services (COM)

  Defines how applications emit and accept protocol (for example, X/Open Remote Procedure Call Interface Definition Language).

• Distributed Services (DIST)

  Facilitates cooperative processing between two platforms (for example, naming and distributed time services).
  

• Security Services (SEC)

  Enforces security policies on data and processing objects on the platform and data objects exchanged between platforms.

Software Platform Model shows the software platform model. This figure only illustrates platform services. It does not illustrate how those services are layered or composed.

SPIRIT concentrates primarily on the areas of Management Services, Data Management Services, Transaction Services, Communication Services, Distributed Services and Security Services, consistent with a focus on middleware standards, which is the general area of technology that provides the best return of effort.

Footnotes

1.

The abbreviations in parentheses are used in Specifications for the purpose of cross referencing.