Elastic Components: Addressing Variance of Quality Properties in Components

The quality properties of a software component, although verified by the component developer and even certified by a trusted third-party, might very well be inappropriate for the requirements of a new system. This is what we call the quality mismatch problem: the mismatch between the quality requirements of a new system with the quality properties exhibited by the components that we want to use for its development. This work contributes to the understanding of the quality mismatch problem between component properties and component-based systems requirements. To solve this problem we introduce the concept of elastic components. An elastic component is an open-ended hierarchy of the same pure component with variants that differ between them to the quality properties that they exhibit. We present a quality-driven design approach that can be effectively applied for the design and implementation of elastic components.