Component-oriented programming with sharing: Containment is not ownership

Abstract. Component-oriented programming yields a tension between higher-order features (deployment, reconfiguration, passivation), encapsulation, and component sharing. We propose a discipline for component-oriented program-ming to address this issue, and we define a process calculus whose operational semantics embodies this programming discipline. We present several examples that illustrate how the calculus supports component sharing, while allowing strong encapsulation and higher-order primitives.