Evaluation of static properties for component-based architectures

Early assessment of the compositional properties of component compositions is one of the hottest issues in component-based architecting. We describe a method for evaluating the static properties of an architecture, given the features of its constituents. The estimation framework is based on composition rules and the specification of the static properties of the components by means of a reflection interface. Two evaluation approaches, exhaustive and selective, provide a flexible trade-off between the estimation effort and the necessary precision. The method was successfully applied to the Koala component model for estimating the static memory consumption.