In programming and engineering disciplines, a component is an identifiable part of a larger program or construction. Usually, a component provides a particular function or group of related functions. In programming design, a system is divided into components that in turn are made up of modules. Component test means testing all related modules that form a component as a group to make sure they work together.
In object-oriented programming and distributed object technology, a component is a reusable program building block that can be combined with other components in the same or other computers in a distributed network to form an application. Examples of a component include: a single button in a graphical user interface, a small interest calculator, an interface to a database manager. Components can be deployed on different servers in a network and communicate with each other for needed services.
Sun Microsystems, whose JavaBeans application program interface defines how to create component, defines "a component model" as typically providing these major types of services:
- Component interface exposure and discovery. Thus, during application use, one component can interrogate another one to discover its characteristics and how to communicate with it. This allows different companies (possibly independent service providers) to create components that can interoperate with the components of other companies without either having to know in advance exactly which components it will be working with.
- Component properties. This allows a component to make its characteristics publicly visible to other components.
- event handling. This allows one component to identify to one or more other components that an event (such as a user pressing a button) has occurred so that the component can respond to it. In Sun's example, a component that provided a button user interface for a finance application would "raise" an event when the button was pressed, resulting in a graph-calculating component gaining control, formulating a graph, and displaying it to the user.
- Persistence. This allows the state of components to be preserved for later user sessions.
- Application builder support. A central idea of components is that they will not only be easy and flexible for deploying in a distributed network, but that developers can easily create new components and see the properties of existing ones.
- Component packaging. Since a component may comprise several files, such as icons and other graphical files, Sun's component model includes a facility for packaging the files in a single file format that can be easily administered and distributed. (Sun calls their component package a JAR (Java Archive) file format.)