Introduction from the session chair Component Models and Technologies

Components exist in different flavors. For instance, a component can be a binary building block according to the definition of Szyperski [6]. These are directly usable but they cannot be changed or inspected internally (black-box reuse). Components can also be in source form [4, 5]. Such component have to be compiled first before they can be used. Their internals however, can be inspected and even changed (white-box reuse), although that is often not allowed. A component can also be a collection of models describing different aspects of the component. Examples are the documentation model which contains a component’s documentation, the execution model which contains the reusable asset, and the performance model which contains performance aspects of a component.