Achieving Dependable Component-Based Systems Through Generative Aspect Oriented Component Adaptation

Mismatches between pre-qualified existing components and the particular reuse context in applications are often inevitable and have been a major hurdle of component reusability and smooth composition. Although component adaptation has acted as a key solution of eliminating these mismatches, existing practices are either only capable for adaptation at a rather simple level, or requires too much intervention from software engineers. This paper presents a highly automated approach to component adaptation at adequately deep level. Its aspect-oriented nature makes the approach particularly suitable for constructing highly dependable component-based software. The adaptability and automation is achieved in an aspect-oriented component adaptation framework by generating and then applying the adaptation aspects under designed weaving process according to specific adaptation requirements. An expandable library of reusable adaptation aspects at multiple abstraction levels has been developed. A prototype tool is developed to scale up the approach