Object-oriented software technology has some significant flaws that are addressed with component technology. The foundations of software component technology and the possible and useful kinds of software composition are still an open issue of ongoing research.

After a clarification of important issues of component technology and component composition, we present an object-oriented component framework that was developed to serve as the basis for an adaptable software development environment. The framework supports the construction of applications with a direct-manipulation user interface (especially graphic editors) and a code-generation back-end. It uses a trading mechanism for component integration at run time, facilitates the separation of component adaptation and component composition, and incorporates an architecture that supports system evolution to a certain degree.