An introduction to component-based programing through the Think project.

In the context of software engineering, component-based programming becomes more and more popular. Indeed, during the last decade, many different component models appeared for various application domains such as modelization (e.g. UML2.0, SDL), distributed applications (e.g. J2EE, CCM, .NET), real-time systems (e.g. PECOS, VEST) or embedded systems (e.g. PECOS, Think). The huge number of different component models make difficult to understand the concept of component.

The objective of this talk is to give an introduction to component-based programming. A first part will present motivations and concepts of component, while a second part will identify the main characteristics of the most popular models. Finally, a last part will present the Think component-based operating system in order to illustrate the concepts previously presented.

Dr. Jean-Charles Tournier is a post-doc at CS department of University of New Mexico in the SSL group since October 2005. He received his PhD from the National Institute of Applied Sciences (France) in 2005. During his PhD, Jean-Charles has been involved in the definition of an abstract component model called Fractal. In the same time, he was part of the team who implemented this component model. This implementation, called Think, deals with operating systems development: it provides a set of tools and a set of components to compose an application-specific operating system.