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.