On Automating Component-based Development

A number of approaches to component-based development and tools to automate the associated processes have been proposed. However, most of them focus on a life cycle where component-based systems are generated from scratch rather than on one where they are constructed by composing preexisting components. This has negatively impacted automating component-based development and as a corollary its use in practice. In this paper we share our experiences on designing and developing an environment to automate component-based development. We highlight the importance of concepts such as component-based development life cycle, component model and composition theory to achieve the goal of component-based development automation.