1. From objects to components

The 1990s saw an explosion in the use of the object paradigm for building software, whether in design methods (OMT, UML), programming languages (C++, Java), graphical user interfaces, object-oriented databases (OQL, ODMG) or distributed systems (CORBA). It is now widely recognized that the object is an essential paradigm for building scalable and maintainable software. Nevertheless, the object is not without its faults, and there is increasing talk of components such as Microsoft's Java Beans, Enterprise Java Beans or CORBA components, to name but the best-known. While the benefits of using objects are fairly well characterized in the literature [1] , it should be noted that the component paradigm remains very vague. It's difficult to draw the line between objects and components: isn't a component simply an evolved object?...