Application

Clearly, the degree of pluggability is determined by the ease with which a tool can be retargeted to either information source. Conversely, pluggability must cope with changes in the information sources themselves--to a different reflection model, for example, or to a different repository. Figure  shows how two tools, each a client of meta-information, can exploit pluggability:

Figure: Pluggable reflection

1. Object-to-component generator [22], initially dependent on reflection, is retargeted to use a repository.

2. javadoc [12],²normally a repository client, is retargeted to use reflection.