Dynamic instantiation-checking components

Abstract

Parameterization is an effective technique for building flexible, reusable software. When dealing with parameterized components, an important concern is the time at which parameters are bound. Many languages provide syntactic support for parameterized components; this mode of parameterization can be called static parameterization. In order to be able to support dynamic reconfiguration, the Service Facility pattern has been proposed as an enabling technology for dynamic parameterization. However, static parameterization has the advantage of strong type-checking that dynamic parameterization does not. In this paper, we present DynInstaCheck --- a tool that automatically instruments dynamically bound parameterized components with run-time checking code that ensures type-safe parameter binding. The source instrumentation is done in a non-intrusive way, using aspect-oriented programming.