A decoupled type safe mechanism for inter component communication and service layer integration. Can be used for integrating any service lookup mechanism or IoC container (Spring, Guice, Tapestry IoC) into a Vaadin application. The Vaadin components using the services will have no dependencies on the specific service layer technology, making it easier to switch. The typical scenarios where Contextual Object Lookup (COL) is used is as follows: 1. A component deep down in the hierarchy needs to communicate with some other component closer to the root of the hierarchy. 2. A component deep down in the hierarchy needs to operate on an object that is provided by some other component closer to the root of the hierarchy. 3. A component needs access to the service layer.