COP has been described as the natural extension of object-oriented programming to the realm of independently extensible systems. Several important approaches have emerged over the recent years, including CORBA/CCM, COM/COM+, JavaBeans/EJB, and most recently .NET. After WCOP'96 focused on the fundamental terminology of COP, the subsequent workshops expanded into the many related facets of component software. WCOP 2001 shall emphasise the relationship between software architecture and component software. Two topics of particular interest are components vs. generators to address architectural variability and the component/connector distinction. In addition, submissions reporting on experience with component-oriented software systems in practice are strongly encouraged, where the emphasis is on interesting lessons learned, whether the actual project was a success or a failure.
To enable lively and productive discussions, the workshop will be limited to 25 participants. Depending on the submitted position papers, the workshop will be organized into three or four subsequent mini-sessions, each initiated by a presentation of two or three selected positions and followed by discussions. Instead of splitting the workshop into task forces, it is intended to provoke lively discussion by preparing lists of critical questions and some, perhaps provocative, statements (to be used on demand).
Position papers will be formally reviewed, each by at least two independent reviewers. As an incentive for submission of high quality statements, the best position statements will be combined with transcripts of workshop results and published.
COP has been described as the natural extension of object-oriented programming to the realm of independently extensible systems. Several important approaches have emerged over the recent years, including component technology standards, such as CORBA/CCM, COM/COM+, JavaBeans/EJB, and most recently .NET, but also the increasing appreciation of software architecture for component-based systems, and the consequent effects on organizational processes and structures as well as software development business as a whole. After WCOP'96 focused on the fundamental terminology of COP, the subsequent workshops expanded into the many related facets of component software. WCOP 2001 has an explicit focus on the connection between software architecture and component software: are these the flip sides of the same coin? Two exemplary problem areas are the use of components versus generators to address architectural variability and the distinction between components and connectors.
COP aims at producing software components for a component market and for late composition. Composers are third parties, possibly the end user, who are not able or willing to change components. This requires standards to allow independently created components to interoperate, and specifications that put the composer into the position to decide what can be composed under which conditions. On these grounds, WCOP'96 led to the following definition:
A component is a unit of composition with contractually specified interfaces and explicit context dependencies only. Components can be deployed independently and are subject to composition by third parties.
A problem often discussed in the context of COP are quality attributes (a.k.a. system qualities). Another key problem that results from the dual nature of components between technology and markets are the non-technical aspects of components, including marketing, distribution, selection, licensing, and so on. While it is already hard to establish functional properties under free composition of components, non-functional and non-technical aspects tend to emerge from composition and are thus even harder to control. In the context of specific architecture, what can be said about the quality attributes of systems composed according to the architecture's constraints?
Submissions reporting on success stories in practice are strongly encouraged.
Topics of interest to WCOP 2001 include, but are not limited to:
Relationship to Workshop 8:
Feature interaction in composed systems, a theme targetted by
workshop 8, is a generic problem in any compositional approach.
WCOP incorporates such feature interaction as a topic of interest
if clearly linked to the issues of software components as
defined for the purpose of this workshop: components that are the
units of deployment (and thus versioning and evolution) of
software systems. Workshop 8, on the other hand, covers this
topic in a broader sense and is more appropriate to discuss
issues of feature interaction as found in more generic
composition theories and approaches.
To enable lively and productive discussions, attendance will be limited to 25 participants. To participate in the workshop, acceptance of a submitted position statement is required and at most two authors per accepted submission can participate.
All submissions will be formally reviewed. High-quality position statements will be considered for publication in conjunction with transcripts of workshop results. Authors of accepted papers need to participate in the workshop.
Position statements should clearly state how they relate to the workshop theme, what particular problems they address, what solutions they envisage, and why the statement is expected to be relevant to both this workshop and the community. Statements should be four to eight pages (single-spaced A4 or letter) long and state the author's name, affiliation, and contact. Submissions should be e-mailed to Clemens Szyperski (plain ASCII, Word RTF, standard Postscript, or PDF).