Tailorable Systems: Design, Support, Techniques, and Applications

Abstract

A tailorable system is one that can be tailored in its use-environment, without any changes to the source-code of the original system. Such a system must allow its users to make significant changes to its functionality, but without any modifications to its source-code. One way to accomplish this is to write the system in a manner such that changes to the system's functionality can be made by extensions to its source-code as opposed to modifications of its source-code. A system written in this manner is an extensible system.

The goal of this dissertation is to study the problems encountered in the process of developing highly extensible systems, and in the process of tailoring them. The study is logically divided into four major parts: (1) design deals with issues in the design of extensible systems, (2) support explores the language-level and compiler-level support necessary for developing extensible systems, (3) techniques illustrates some tested techniques for developing extensible systems, and (4) applications deals with the application of the other three parts to create tailorable applications in specific domains.