Adaptation strategies in componentware

In the context of componentware, there are several different strategies to adapt a given generic component. They differ in the necessary prerequisites and the achieved quality of the resulting specific component with respect to reliability, efficiency and reusability. In this paper, we discuss a number of conceivable adaptation strategies for components, like wrapping, composition or inheritance. We use the graphical user interface of a computer-aided engineering system as an example to illustrate the transfer of a selected adaptation strategy into practical system development.