Software Components – Concepts

Software components combine components (DCs) to larger units for delivery and deployment.

·        Every top-level component must be assigned to exactly one software component.

·        Child components always belong to the same software component as their parent.

·        The assignment of DCs to software components is not static and may change over time.

·        Software components cannot be nested into each other.

A software component does not control the visibility of its assigned development components.

·        Therefore, software components are not considered to adhere to the black box principle like development components.

·        Software components do not define public parts: All assigned components are automatically public.

Software components can depend on one another and use one another, similar to DCs.

• Since software components do not have development objects of their own, they define dependencies exclusively for the components assigned to them.
• A DC can use another DC from a different software component only if its own software component defines an appropriate dependency.
• DCs can restrict their being used to certain software components by specifying access control lists.
• Software components thus may be used to effectively implement software layers.

Software components have globally unique names, which are structured according to the rules for DC names. You must define the name when you create the software component; the name cannot be changed later. Names of software components usually consist of a vendor ID and only one segment, such as sap.com/crm.

For more information on reasonable names for software components, see Tips for Naming Components.