Automated reuseable components system study results

The Automated Reusable Components System (ARCS) was developed under a Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract for the U.S. Army CECOM. The objectives of the ARCS program were: (1) to investigate issues associated with automated reuse of software components, identify alternative approaches, and select promising technologies, and (2) to develop tools that support component classification and retrieval. The approach followed was to research emerging techniques and experimental applications associated with reusable software libraries, to investigate the more mature information retrieval technologies for applicability, and to investigate the applicability of specialized technologies to improve the effectiveness of a reusable component library. Various classification schemes and retrieval techniques were identified and evaluated for potential application in an automated library system for reusable components. Strategies for library organization and management, component submittal and storage, and component search and retrieval were developed. A prototype ARCS was built to demonstrate the feasibility of automating the reuse process. The prototype was created using a subset of the classification and retrieval techniques that were investigated. The demonstration system was exercised and evaluated using reusable Ada components selected from the public domain. A requirements specification for a production-quality ARCS was also developed

An Information Retrieval Approach for Automatically Constructing Software Libraries

Although software reuse presents clear advantages for programmer productivity and code reliability, it is not practiced enough. One of the reasons for the only moderate success of reuse is the lack of software libraries that facilitate the actual locating and understanding of reusable components. This paper describes a technology for automatically assembling large software libraries which promote software reuse by helping the user locate the components closest to her/his needs. Software libraries are automatically assembled from a set of unorganized components by using information retrieval techniques. The construction of the library is done in two steps. First, attributes are automatically extracted from natural language documentation by using a new indexing scheme based on the notions of lexical affinities and quantity of information. Then a hierarchy for browsing is automatically generated using a clustering technique which draws only on the information provided by the attributes. Thanks to the free-text indexing scheme, tools following this approach can accept free-style natural language queries. This technology has been implemented in the GURU system, which has been applied to construct an organized library of AIX utilities. An experiment was conducted in order to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of GURU as compared to INFOEXPLORER a hypertext library system for AIX 3 on the IBM RISC System/6000 series. We followed the usual evaluation procedure used in information retrieval, based upon recall and precision measures, and determined that our system performs 15% better on a random test set, while being much less expensive to build than INFOEXPLORER

Making navigation easier in object-oriented programming systems

It has been reported that non-expert users have difficulties in finding reusable software components in large object-oriented programming systems and there is a need for help tools. The research reported in this thesis addresses this issue. Described in this thesis is the design of a tool called BRRR, which aims to help non-expert users overcome such difficulties. It is developed for Smalltalk-80, the target system of this research.BRRR is a query tool with a browsing capacity. It allows users to find necessary components by query. Its design is based on the 'retrieval by reformulation' paradigm (Williams, 1984) which was originally used in the domain of information retrieval. This paradigm allows users to incrementally specify a query by reformulation. When users specify an initial query, BRRR presents the users with an example component which satisfies the query. The users can then construct further queries by using the information presented by the system. In this way, users who are not familiar with the system or who do not know exactly what they want can be guided towards the appropriate information.During this research, two versions of BRRR were developed: BRRRl and BRRR2. BRRRl was developed initially, based on the 'retrieval by reformulation' principle. After its implementation, a formative, empirical evaluation was conducted on it with a group of users. Based on the findings of the evaluation, BRRR2, an improved version of BRRR1 was developed. BRRR2 incorporates enhanced classification methods and explanation facilities. This new version of the tool was then evaluated empirically with a group of ten users.The empirical evaluation of BRRR2 showed encouraging results. It demonstrates that the 'retrieval by reformulation' approach used in this research could be used successfully in helping users find reusable software components in object-oriented programming systems

Software library for reuse-oriented program development.

Distributed system or reuse-oriented program development system may call for software reuse library (SRL, repository) to serve as a resource provider by the usage of reusable software components. We are trying to solve the problems of storing and classifying, locating/retrieving, and delivering the large number of software components through the SRL in an effective way. In this thesis we report on the design and construction of a prototype software system, DORLM (Distributed Object-based Software Reuse Library Module), used to investigate the integration of DBMS (database management system), IRS (information retrieval system), NLP (natural language process) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) for software reuse and reuse-oriented program development in a distributed computing context. The DORLM provides an effective way to store, retrieve, and deliver reusable software components as an aid of reuse-oriented program development in the distributed environment. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 40-03, page: 0730. Adviser: R. Kent. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2000

Reusability in software engineering

This paper surveys recent work concerning reusability in software engineering. The current directions in software reusability are discussed, and the two major approaches of reusable building blocks and reusable patterns studied. An extensive bibliography, parts of which are annotated, is included

Semantic annotation, publication, and discovery of Java software components: an integrated approach

Component-based software development has matured into standard practice in software engineering. Among the advantages of reusing software modules are lower costs, faster development, more manageable code, increased productivity, and improved software quality. As the number of available software components has grown, so has the need for effective component search and retrieval. Traditional search approaches, such as keyword matching, have proved ineffective when applied to software components. Applying a semantically- enhanced approach to component classification, publication, and discovery can greatly increase the efficiency of searching and retrieving software components. This has been already applied in the context of Web technologies, and Web services in particular, in the frame of Semantic Web Services research. This paper examines the similarities between software components and Web services and adapts an existing Semantic Web Service publication and discovery solution into a software component annotation and discovery tool which is implemented as an Eclipse plug-in

AdaNET prototype library administration manual

The functions of the AdaNET Prototype Library of Reusable Software Parts is described. Adopted from the Navy Research Laboratory's Reusability Guidebook (V.5.0), this is a working document, customized for use the the AdaNET Project. Within this document, the term part is used to denote the smallest unit controlled by a library and retrievable from it. A part may have several constituents, which may not be individually tracked. Presented are the types of parts which may be stored in the library and the relationships among those parts; a concept of trust indicators which provide measures of confidence that a user of a previously developed part may reasonably apply to a part for a new application; search and retrieval, configuration management, and communications among those who interact with the AdaNET Prototype Library; and the AdaNET Prototype, described from the perspective of its three major users: the part reuser and retriever, the part submitter, and the librarian and/or administrator