Supporting Pluggable Configuration Algorithms in PCOM

Marcus Hadnte, Klaus Herrmann, Gregor Shiele, Chrisitan Becker

The authors have defined the initial definition of PCOM in [1]

Devices have component containers that mange the hosted components on the device. The functionalieis are offered as contracts in terms of interfaces. Also it can have resource requirements that a component must meet in order to use a component. For applications there is an application anchor which is possibly the starting component (root) for an application.

configuration algorithms control the chaining of components.

The goals for PCOM are

1. Resilience failure
2. Efficiency & minimalization
3. Simplicity & Extensibility

In the new design the container is broken into parts

1. the application manager: starts the anchor but it restarts it to the very beginning point whenever needed, which is quite stupid
   
2. assembler: implements the functionality of computing valid configurations. Assembler can launch different configuration algorithms depending on the situation.
   
3. component container: are actually the providers of components for the other two components in the system.