Components are prefabricated building blocks that are assembled to create larger software systems that have been used and proven in a variety of engineering disciplines from electrical to mechanical engineering. Just as in these disciplines fundamental standards have to be applied to provide wiring services, standard services and application domain standards. We will show how Python provides an excellent environment for creating and using components and discuss techniques to facilitate programming and testing. We will also discuss existing component architectures and standards that already (or soon will) smoothly integrate with Python such as CORBA and Microsoft's COM and .NET architectures.

Outline

• What is Component Oriented Programming?
• Why Python?
• Techniques for expressing public interfaces (wiring).
• Techniques for testing components.
• Future work.