Research Topics in Software Composition

Abstract

Traditional software development approaches do notcope well with the evolving requirements of opensystems. We argue that such systems are best viewedas flexible compositions of "software components"designed to work together as part of a componentframework that formalizes a class of applicationswith a common software architecture. To enable sucha view of software systems, we need appropriatesupport from programming language technology,software tools, and methods. We will briefly reviewthe current state of object-oriented technology,insofar as it supports componentorienteddevelopment, and propose a research agenda of topicsfor further investigation.