| Abstract: |
Slowly and inexorably the application development industry is falling in line with other more mature engineering industries, where large, complex but reliable products are produced through assembly of smaller, less complex parts. The major business drivers for this are the quality and development speed advantages that can be obtained from the reuse of standardized parts, and, perhaps more importantly, the maintenance and application flexibility benefits which accrue from the careful management of dependencies that a component-based approach mandates. But despite the clear business benefits, it is fair to say that progress has been slow. This is not due to a lack of activity in the areas of technology development. In fact, in part due to all this development, the tendency in recent years has been to assume that the technology must be sufficient and that the main barriers to adoption are therefore cultural and organizational. While there are certainly many issues to be addressed regarding these non-technology areas, this article exposes the fact that the current technology advances are not yet sufficient, that there are significant concept, pattern and policy gaps that still need filling.
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