1. TINA architecture

A service implemented according to the principles and concepts defined by TINA (Telecommunications Information Network Architecture) [1] like any other telecommunications or information service, consists of a set of service components interacting with each other. Each service component can itself be broken down into a set of processing objects. Communication (interaction) between processing objects is supported in TINA by distribution mechanisms offered by a distributed processing environment.

In order to achieve good structuring, modularity and reusability in the TINA architecture, three categories of service components are defined (figure 1 ):

• service components...