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Component inheritance

It has to be strongly differentiated between meta-model classes and model instances. Meta-model classes are organized in inheritance structures. For example the meta-model class complete component type inherits from the meta-model class provided component type. In contrast for model instances (of component types) there is no inheritance allowed. From the perspective of the PCM components (instances) do not support inheritance. Instead the conforms-relation exists to express sub-type / super-type relations among component instances.

Figure 3.3 shows a provided component type instance and a complete component type instance. The complete component type instance conforms to the provided component type instance (the same interface IRequestProcessor is provided). This means the provided type instance is a super-type of the complete type instance, and in turn the complete type instance is a sub-type of the provided type instance.



Snowball 2007-03-16