Fault tolerance techniques use some form of redundancy (e.g. hardware, software, data) to deal with run-time errors and provide system repair, state restoration and error masking. However, these techniques come with a high cost in terms of system complexity and time penalties during system execution, which not all system can afford. A cheaper alternative is to survive an error by removing the affected part of the system and gracefully degrade to a lower state of functionality. In component-based software, graceful degradation of system functionality translates into the gradual removal of the components that are affected by errors. The modular nature of component-based software makes the consideration of graceful degradation in the system design a straightforward task. Even for component-based software that is designed without any provision for graceful degradation, a mechanism can be added to the run-time system to operate on the component bindings and provide graceful degradation.