Appliance

Overview

An appliance is the internal handler of a component. It is responsible for component deployment and decommissioning. An appliance can be view as an instance of a unique named deployment scenario where a deployment scenario is the result of combining a particular component type with deployment meta-data (configuration, context directives, etc.).

Components

A component is an instantiated java.lang.Object managed by an Appliance. A component is characterised by deployment and runtime dependencies which are managed by an appliance in response to service requests. A component typically exposes services (public interfaces) through implementation or other means. In addition a component may declare runtime dependencies on service provided by other components. Wiring together provider and consumer components to fulfil deployment and runtime dependencies is referred to as component assembly.