Component plus aspect = an extensible and adaptable system software

The benefits associated with separation of concerns are well established. Aspect-Orientation is a methodology that aims at separating components and aspects from the early stages of the software life cycle, and using techniques to combining them together at the implementation phase. Component-based programming systems have shown themselves to be a natural way of constructing extensible software. Well-defined interfaces, encapsulation, late binding and polymorphism promote extensibility, yet despite this synergy, components have not been widely employed at the systems level. This is primarily due to the failure of existing component technologies to provide the protection and performance required of systems software. In this paper we identify the requirements for a component system to support extensions, and describe an extensibility and adaptability in the design of system software. We discuss in aspect-oriented framework that can simplify system design by expressing it at a higher level of abstraction. Our work concentrates on how to achieve a higher separation of aspects, components, and layers from each other. Our goal is to achieve a better design model for system software in terms of extensibility, reuse and adaptability.