Advanced software technology supporting customer programmability

Facilitating the creation of new services by an end user or network provider as required for Universal Information Services (UIS) requires new software capabilities. New software technology and design approaches will be required to support these capabilities. This article describes two promising approaches for providing customer programmability: component-oriented software and application-oriented languages. Component-oriented software packages software into units that can be independently developed, tested, installed, and maintained, providing a means of isolating customer-developed software from other software in the system. Application-oriented languages provide a high-level programming environment in which new services can be developed without extensive knowledge of the existing software. It also limits the functionality that the programmer can modify to a specific functional area. These approaches have the potential to support UIS customer programmability.