Designing components versus objects: A transformational approach

Abstract

A good object-oriented design does not necessarily make a good component-based design, and vice versa. What design principles do components introduce? This paper examines component-based programming and how it expands the design space in the context of an event-based component architecture. We present a conceptual model for addressing new design issues these components afford, and we identify fundamental design decisions in this model that are not a concem in conventional object-oriented design. We use JavaBeans-basedexamples to illustrate concretely how expertise in component-based design, as embodied in a component taxonomy and implementation space, impacts both design and the process of design. The results are not exclusive to JavaBeans-they can apply to any comparable component architecture.