Dynamic Coupling of Binary Components and its Technical Support

The aim of todays software development is to build applications by the reuse of binary compo- nents. This requires the composition of components and as special cases component enhancement as well as adaption. We demonstrate how to deal with these cases by furnishing components with a type consisting of two protocols — a call and a use protocol. We model these protocols by finite automata and show how those reflect component enhancement and adaption. This mechanism allows for automatic adaption of components in changing environments. In order to obtain binary components we have to compile corresponding sources. In view of the required features of the binary components and with the problems of compiling generic classes in mind, we describe an approach to generate such pre-compiled components by appropriate compiler extensions.