Component-based software based on software architectures is emerging to be the next generation software development paradigm. The paradigm shifts the development focus from lines-of-codes to coarser-grained components and the interconnections among them. It consists of system architecture design, architecture description, component search and system integration from components to generate a software system.

However, one of the bottlenecks in this paradigm is the integration of the individual components into the overall system. In this dissertation a methodology for component-based system integration is proposed. It is based on an architectural aggregation view, a component model, flowgraphs and cyclomatic complexity. We introduce this view, model, and new ways to compute cyclomatic complexity based on flowgraphs.

The methodology makes use of Jackson diagram to represent the detailed design of a system and decomposes the system into components and aggregations. An aggregation is a set of components glued together by one connector, and is represented as a flowgraph. Then an aggregation flowgraph is decomposed into prime flowgraphs called prime connections. An Implementation Description Language (IDL) is introduced to represent the aggregations and components. Finally a system synthesis mechanism is proposed that is responsible for translating prime connections, embedding functional units into them, and composing aggregations and the integrated system from them.