Software Components

Dated back to 1968, it was the visionary act of Douglas McIlroy, who integrated pipes and filters into UNIX operating systems to counter the software crisis, and it can be considered as the first componentization of predefined components launching the idea for the development of software components.

A software component is software designed by programmers to work as a component of a larger application. By integrating several components to form a complex application a computer will be able to produce more sophisticated and effective economical solutions to any organization’s business needs.

A computer running several software components is called as an application server and several computers running software components integrate to form the distributed computing model. This is generally seen in financial applications, and business software.

If a business organization plans to purchase software for its requirements it would not only be difficult to integrate but is also very expensive to customize the application to meet your needs. However if you hire a group of professionals to build one application for you it is tedious, time consuming, and also expensive. But when it comes to the case of software components, you only pay for something that would exactly meet your requirements. Moreover, a software component is created with the basic objective to be reusable in nature. Thus a component could be purchased by multiple bodies and thus the production cost is shared by everybody.

The most popular software components available in the market are of the following technologies: .NET Components, Java Components, AJAX/Flash/Javascript Components, ActiveX/COM/DLL/VCL Components, and Other Components.