Chapter 1. Introducing Component-Oriented Programming


Over the last decade, component-oriented programming has established itself as the predominant software development methodology. The software industry is moving away from giant, monolithic, hard-to-maintain code bases. Practitioners have discovered that by breaking down a system into binary components, they can attain much greater reusability, extensibility, and maintainability. These benefits can, in turn, lead to faster time to market, more robust and highly scalable applications, and lower development and long-term maintenance costs. Consequently, it's no coincidence that component-oriented programming has caught on in a big way.

Several component technologies, such as DCOM, CORBA, and JavaBeans? give programmers the means to implement component-oriented applications. However, each technology has its drawbacks; for example, DCOM is too difficult to master, and the Java? Virtual Machine (JVM) doesn't support interoperation with other languages.

.NET is the latest entrant to the field, and as you will see later in this chapter and in the rest of this book, it addresses the requirements of component-oriented programming in a way that is both unique and vastly easier to use. These improvements are of little surprise, because the .NET architects were able to learn from both the mistakes and successes of previous technologies.

In this chapter, I'll define the basic terms of component-oriented programming and summarize its core principles and their corresponding benefits. These principles apply throughout the book, and I'll refer to them in later chapters when describing the motivations for particular .NET design patterns.

Component-oriented programming is different from object-oriented programming, although the two methodologies do have things in common. You could say that component-oriented programming sprouted from the well of object-oriented programming methodologies. Therefore, this chapter also contrasts component-oriented programming and object-oriented programming, while briefly discussing .NET as a component technology.



Programming. NET Components
Programming .NET Components, 2nd Edition
ISBN: 0596102070
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 145
Authors: Juval Lowy

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net