Microcomponent-based component controllers: a foundation for component aspects

In most component models, a software component consists of a functional part and a controller part. The controller part may be extensible; however, existing component models provide no means to capture the structure of the controller part, and therefore neither to specify the controller part extensions. In this paper, we introduce a minimalist component model to capture the structure of the controller part, coining the term microcomponent for the controller part elements. We further introduce the concept of a component aspect as a consistent set of controller part extensions. Within this framework, it is possible to seamlessly integrate controller part extensions, applying them to the components selected in the application´s launch configuration. We have evaluated these concepts in a prototype implementation.