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Component-Oriented Programming

Component-Oriented Programming is a reuse-based approach to defining, implementing and composing loosely-coupled independent components into systems.

Atmos supports the following concepts and principles of Component-Oriented Programming (COP):

  • Single Inheritance - when an Atmos component inherits the configuration properties from another Atmos component

  • Multiple Inheritance - when an Atmos component inherits from more than one Atmos component

  • Dynamic Polymorphism - ability to use and override base component(s) properties

  • Encapsulation - enclose a set of related configuration properties into reusable loosely-coupled modules. Encapsulation is implemented by Atmos Components which are opinionated building blocks of Infrastructure-as-Code (IAC) that solve one specific problem or use-case

  • Abstraction, which is accomplished by these Atmos features:

    • Principle of Abstraction: in a given stack, "hide" all but the relevant information about a component configuration in order to reduce complexity and increase efficiency
    • Abstract Components: if a component is marked as abstract, it can be used only as a base for other components and can't be provisioned using atmos or CI/CD systems like Spacelift or Atlantis (see our integrations for details)

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These concepts and principles are implemented and used in Atmos by combining two features: import and metadata component's configuration section.