Pluggable Reflection: Decoupling Meta-Interface and Implementation

David H. Lorenz¹
Northeastern University
College of Computer & Information Science
Boston, MA 02115, USA
lorenz@ccs.neu.edu

John Vlissides
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 704,
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA
vlis@us.ibm.com

Abstract:

Reflection remains a second-class citizen in current programming models, where it's assumed to be imperative and tightly bound to its implementation. In contrast, most object-oriented APIs allow interfaces to vary independently of their implementations. Components take this separation a step further by describing unforeseeable attributes--the key to pluggable third-party components. This paper describes how reflection can benefit from a similar evolutionary path.