Distra's component framework architecture enables applications to respond rapidly to ever changing business requirements. Frameworks provide a set of rules and functions that orchestrate overall behaviour of the application while components are introduced into the framework to provide specific functional characteristics and interact in predefined ways.
Traditionally, and typically a characteristic of legacy systems, a procedural software design is employed because of constraints and construct limitations within the programming language. As a by-product, these systems, once written to suit a particular application, are often very limited in their speed and ability to scale, are often single threaded or serial in operation at critical sections of processing and hence dubious claims to being 'real-time' processors. Furthermore, they are difficult to maintain and the procedural nature leads to complexity and difficulty in maintenance, modification and debugging and the inevitable 'spaghetti code'.
Distra employ a modern component based software architecture. Everything within the Distra Switch is treated as a component and developed in a way that it neatly 'plugs in' to the software application, behaving in a specific and determined way. These components can be used as is or extended by aggregation or composition to create a more complex, feature rich component.
This approach results in a very flexible 'plug-in' architecture that promotes reuse of existing base components and provides an efficient means of development and modification.
For example several lines of Java code that calculate how a fee is applied. A classic example is the ability remove a simple daily limit component and replace it with a more elaborate, day of the week aware component to enable different limits to be applied based upon the day of the week. This component can be developed and tested in isolation and then introduced into the application by merely replacing the simpler version.
A component based architecture makes it that simple.