Developing Adaptable Components Using Dynamic Languages

The usage of dynamic languages is increasing among developers. As components are static entities, the usage of scripting languages, which are usually dynamically typed and interpreted, would bring flexibility in the development of components allowing component reconfiguration and adaptation at runtime without needing either to recompile the component code or to restart the application. This paper presents a general approach for creating adaptable components by using dynamic scripting languages combined with component models. This concept has been implemented and validated in two different contexts: in the OSGi platform and in a fractal-like approach.