Surviving errors in component-based software

Fault tolerance techniques use some form of redundancy (e.g. hardware, software, data) to deal with runtime errors and provide system repair, state restoration and error masking. However, these techniques come with a high cost in terms of system complexity and time penalties during system execution, which not all system can afford. A cheaper alternative is to survive an error by removing the affected part of the system and gracefully degrade to a lower state of functionality. In component-based software, graceful degradation of system functionality translates into the gradual removal of the components that are affected by errors. The modular nature of component-based software makes the consideration of graceful degradation in the system design a straightforward task. Even for component-based software that is designed without any provision for graceful degradation, a mechanism can be added to the runtime system to operate on the component bindings and provide graceful degradation.