Late Component Adaptation

Extended Abstract

Binary component adaptation (BCA) [KH98] is a mechanism to modify existing components (such as Java classfiles) to the specific needs of a programmer. Binary component adaptation allows components to be adapted and evolved in binary form. BCA rewrites component binaries while they are loaded, requires no source code access and guarantees release-to-release compatibility. Rewriting class binaries is possible if classes contain enough symbolic information (as do Java class files). Component adaptation takes place after the component has been delivered to the programmer, and the internal structure of a component is directly modified in place to make changes. Rather than creating new classes such as wrapper classes, the definition of the original class is modified.