. The aim of component technology is the replacement of large monolithic applications with sets of smaller software components, whose particular functionality and interoperation can be adapted to users' needs. However, the adaptation mechanisms of component software are still limited. Most proposals concentrate on adaptations that can be achieved either at compile time or at link time. Current support for dynamic component adaptation, i.e. unanticipated, incremental modifications of a component system at run-time, is not sufficient. This paper proposes object-based inheritance (also known as delegation) as a complement to purely forwarding-based object composition. It presents a typesafe integration of delegation into a class-based object model and shows how it overcomes the problems faced by forwarding-based component interaction, how it supports independent extensibility of components and unanticipated, dynamic component adaptation. 1 Introduction Component-oriented pro...

Design patterns are a standard means to create large software systems. However, with standard object-oriented techniques, typical implementations of such patterns are not themselves reusable software entities. Evolution of a program into a ‘patterned ’ form (also known as ‘refactoring to patterns’) and subsequent evolution of a ‘patterned ’ design is largely left to the programmer. Due to their ability to encapsulate elements that crosscut different modules, aspect languages have the potential to change this situation. For many interesting patterns, a large part of the process of refactoring to patterns can already be implemented modularly in aspects. Still, existing aspect languages can only express a small number of typical patterns implementations in a generally reusable way. In many cases, evolution of an application that uses one pattern variant into one that uses another one cannot be achieved at all. In others, it requires duplicating parts of the aspect implementation, thus creating scattered code in the aspects and hindering their further evolution. In this paper, we argue that aspect languages need to provide genericity in order to support reusable pattern implementations. We sketch the main features of the generic aspect language LogicAJ, and show how it supports software evolution. In particular, we demonstrate how LogicAJ enables evolution of a non-patterned implementation to a patterned one and easy transition from one patterned implementation to another. 1.

Class inheritance and dynamic binding are the key features of object-oriented programming and they permit designing and developing complex systems. However, standard class inheritance is essentially static and cannot be directly employed for modeling dynamic object behaviors. In this paper we propose a linguistic extension of Java, called Dec-Java, that is partially inspired by the decorator design pattern. This extension permits easily separating the basic features of objects (that are likely not to change during the application) from their behaviors (that, instead, can be composed dynamically at run-time). Thus, Dec-Java enables a dynamic extension and specialization of object responsibilities.

Object based, imperative languages with delegation (eg SELF) support exploratory programming: composition of objects, sharing of attributes and modification of objects' behaviour at run-time are easily expressible.

This paper presents Java language from an object-oriented software construction perspective. It explains the implications of banning generics and multiple inheritance of classes, and explores the patterns and the idioms used by the Java designers and programmers to redeem their bene#ts. The paper also discusses an alternative to multiple inheritance, as incorporated in Lava, which extends Java with constructs for type-safe automatic forwarding.

CentiJ is a software synthesis system that, until recently, used synchronous, semiautomatic static proxy delegation to help in the automation of the creation of distributed Java programs on NOWS (Networks of Workstations). This paper reports our recent extension to CentiJ so that invocations are asynchronous. Further, we have achieved transparency with respect to local vs. non-local asynchronous invocations so that software can be properly tested in a local mode.