Encapsulation of structural adaptation by composite components

Abstract

Component-based software engineering offers a way to partition complex systems into well-defined parts. Adaptation mechanisms are crucial to enable run-time reconfiguration and to increase the reuse of these parts in other applications and environments. In this paper we utilize the concept of composite components to map component parameters to different predefined internal configurations of subcomponents. The structural adaptation is thereby encapsulated and hidden from other parts of the system. Configuration variations allow to specify parameterizable configuration patterns. Some extensions to UML diagrams are introduced to model reconfiguration steps. Optional adaptation and aspect operators as additional constituents of composite components increase the flexibility of the presented approach.