A Software Component Model and its Preliminary Formalisation

Kung-Kiu Lau, Zheng Wang
School of Computer Science, the University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
kung-kiu,zw@cs.man.ac.uk 

Mario Ornaghi
Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione,
Universita' degli studi di Milano
Via Comelico 39/41, 20135 Milano, Italy
ornaghi@dsi.unimi.it

Abstract:

A software component model should define what components are,
and how they can be composed. That is, it should define a theory
of components and their composition.  Current software component 
models tend to use objects or port-connector type architectural 
units as components, with method calls and port-to-port 
connections as composition mechanisms. However, these models do 
not provide a proper composition theory,  in particular for key 
underlying concepts such as encapsulation and compositionality. 
In this paper, we outline our notion of these concepts, and give a 
preliminary formalisation of a software component model that embodies 
these concepts.