Conciliation: The Adaptation of Independently Developed Components

Components which are developed independently but have similar behaviour, generally cannot be substituted for use by a client due to structural differences and minor but subtle behavioural differences. An automated solution for adaptation of these mismatches would be desirable. Although automatic adaptation has been addressed by recent works, it fails to go beyond simple structural differences. In this paper an approach for semi-automatic adaptation is proposed, called Conciliation. As well as structural mismatch, Conciliation addresses behaviour mismatch. It does so without requiring modification or recompilation of the clients or the providing components. The Conciliation process is guided by specification; the structure of these specifications is designed for use with component systems. An example of Conciliation in the context of Microsoft’s Component Object Model (COM) and the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is studied in detail, illustrating how Conciliation fits into a real world component model. In a world of overlapping component software standards, Conciliation is a promising solution.