Components

The CBD-HQ site (www.cbd-hq.com/default.asp) has a section wth some good articles about component-based development

The Select Business Systems (www.selectbs.com) site has some information on their software tools for component-based development. 

The J2EE standard at Sun (java.sun.com/j2ee/index.jsp) is a good starting point for Java component-based development.