Yasmin: A component based architecture for software applications

Abstract

Object-oriented programming (OOP) has changed significantly the way to produce software applications and allowed many problems that affected traditional programming to be overcome. Unfortunately several object-oriented frameworks misused OOP techniques, failed to address issues such as application extensibility, and have produced monolithic systems hard to manage and tailor. This paper describes Yasmin, a new object-oriented, component-based architecture for software applications. It allows one to build applications which use system resources efficiently and which can be easily extended and configured in addition to being simple to program and to compose. This is achieved by means of droplets, a new type of software components that can be replaced and modified at runtime and by exploiting novel techniques such as collaboration and delegation.