A case study in application family development by automated component composition: h-p adaptive finite element codes

Abstract

This paper reports a case study in automated composition of application families from components. The case study composes multiple instances of an h-p adaptive finite element code. An application family is represented as a structure of components. Each component is encapsulated with an interface giving a semantic specification of the properties and behavior of the component. Instances of the application family can be automatically assembled from a library of components by a compiler and the application instance can be optimized by component replacement during runtime through runtime component selection and binding. The case study demonstrates the benefits of the component composition approach to application family development and shows that execution efficiency is maintained or improved by the componentized development process. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.