Some remarks

When developing either plugins or components, some requirements must be met to obtain all the functionality provided by these two paradigms[1].

It may seem that some of this requirements are, sometimes, dispensable. For example, why use strategies like CORBA when it doesn't seem to be necessary? The problem is that, if we want to make use of the benefits that this technology enables, not complying with just one of the requirements will make the plugin/component-strategy less robust and flexible. In this example, if later on there would be a need to have different platforms, for example, wrappers would have to be written to do the work this technology is responsible for.

These technologies are very different and each has it's advantages and disadvantages as also having different scopes. If it is the right choice to use one of them or which one to use depends on the project. Nevertheless there are some common keywords that pop out:

• Modularity

• Encapsulation

• Interface contracts

Finally, please note that

It was the purpose of this article to present only an overview on this interesting and popular technology. Please refer to http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/ose/plcomp00/ for a more detailed study, specially regarding the pros and cons, why the above requirements are needed and more focus on implementation issues.