Three empirical studies of a software reuse reference model

The contribution of this paper is a reference model for the practice of software reuse. Our research thesis is that software development based upon a software reuse reference model improves quality of products, productivity of processes and product time‐to‐market for many software development enterprises. The definition and investigation of such a model has been carried out using three steps. First, the reference model is developed based on existing software reuse concepts. Second, this reference model is empirically studied using both legacy studies and lessons learned studies. Third, the impact of the reference model on software development productivity, quality, and time‐to‐market is empirically derived. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An empirical study of a software reuse reference model

In software engineering there is a need for technologies that will significantly decrease effort in developing software products, increase quality of software products and decrease time-to-markets. The software development industry can be improved by utilizing and managing software reuse with an “empirically validated reference model” that can be customized for different kinds of software development enterprises. Our research thesis is that software development based on a software reuse reference model improves the competitive edge and time-to-market of many software development enterprises. The definition and study of such a model has been carried out using four steps. First, the reference model developed here is based on the existing software reuse concepts. Second, this reference model is an empirical study which uses both legacy studies and lessons learned studies. Third, the impact of the reference model on software development effort, quality, and time-to-market is empirically derived. Fourth, an initial set of successful cases, which are based on the software reuse reference model utilization, are identified. The main contribution of this paper is a reference model for the practice of software reuse. A secondary contribution is an initial set of cases from software development enterprises which are successful in the practice of reuse in terms of decreased effort, increased quality and a high correlation in their application of our software reuse reference model activities.     

Dynamic temporal interpretation contexts for temporal abstraction

Temporal abstraction is the task of abstracting higher‐level concepts from time‐stamped data in a context‐sensitive manner. We have developed and implemented a formal knowledge‐based framework for decomposing and solving that task that supports acquisition, maintenance, reuse, and sharing of temporal‐abstraction knowledge. We present the logical model underlying the representation and runtime formation of interpretation contexts. Interpretation contexts are relevant for abstraction of time‐oriented data and are induced by input data, concluded abstractions, external events, goals of the temporal‐abstraction process, and certain combinations of interpretation contexts. Knowledge about interpretation contexts is represented as a context ontology and as a dynamic induction relation over interpretation contexts and other proposition types. Induced interpretation contexts are either basic, composite, generalized, or nonconvex. We provide two examples of applying our model using an implemented system; one in the domain of clinical medicine (monitoring of diabetes patients) and one in the domain of traffic engineering (evaluation of traffic‐control actions). We discuss several distinct advantages to the explicit separation of interpretation‐context propositions from the propositions inducing them and from the abstractions created within them. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Accuracy of software quality models over multiple releases

Many evolving mission‐critical systems must have high software reliability. However, it is often difficult to identify fault‐prone modules early enough in a development cycle to guide software enhancement efforts effectively and efficiently. Software quality models can yield timely predictions of membership in the fault‐prone class on a module‐by‐module basis, enabling one to target enhancement techniques. However, it is an open empirical question, “Can a software quality model remain useful over several releases?” Most prior software quality studies have examined only one release of a system, evaluating the model with modules from the same release. We conducted a case study of a large legacy telecommunications system where measurements on one software release were used to build models, and three subsequent releases of the same system were used to evaluate model accuracy. This is a realistic assessment of model accuracy, closely simulating actual use of a software quality model. A module was considered fault‐prone if any of its faults were discovered by customers. These faults are extremely expensive due to consequent loss of service and emergency repair efforts. We found that the model maintained useful accuracy over several releases. These findings are initial empirical evidence that software quality models can remain useful as a system is maintained by a stable software development process. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

产品线工程理论应用与研究

产品线工程（Product Line Engineering）是运用软件重用思想的一种软件开发方法,它属于一种大粒度的软件复用方式,用于开发相同领域的类似产品过程。由于PLE强调针对特定产品集合的领域开发和面向重用技术,所以能有效地提高软件产品的开发效率和质量,降低软件开发成本。文中介绍了PLE理论,着重研究产品线模型、开发模式、生命周期和体系结构,介绍领域工程和应用工程在生命周期内部的交互作用。通过产品线开发周期分析和比较出PLE在系统开发过程中的特点,最后介绍PLE在HIS系统中的开发应用。     

面向领域的软件定制化开发方法研究与应用

软件重用被视为解决软件危机、提高软件生产率和质量的有效途径。基于体系结构、特定域的重用能够显著提高软件重用的效果。与传统的应用软件开发模式相比,定制化的软件开发具有构件复用率高、开发速度快、产品质量均衡等特点。论文介绍了面向领域的软件生产平台SoftProline,其多引擎协作的体系结构以及定制化的软件开发方式。并给出了一个在电子政务领域的具体实施BH-GRM。     

以体系结构为中心的构件模型设计

分析了构件复用的优势及当前构件开发尚存在的缺陷和不足,阐述了体系结构的概念和集成方式以及构件模型的组织结构、交互原理、实现机制等属性,提出了一个以体系结构为中心建立构件模型的方案.该方案从软件体系结构入手,将系统分解为构件和构件问的交互关系,利用有限状态机表达构件及其交互,从中获得构件接口的需求分析模型,分析接口状态机的状态转移事件寻找构件接口定义,分析参与构件接口交互的类及其属性定义构件内部结构.最后使用构件描述语言对构件模型进行形式化描述,给出了建模的具体过程,设计并实现了一个"打印服务器"构件模型实例.     

一种面向对象的可重用库管理系统的模型

研究软件的可重用技术是提高软件生产率、解决软件危机的良好途径．好的重用技术可以带来高可靠、高性能、高质量和高效率的软件新系统．重用是支持软件工程新范型的基本前提．本文介绍了一种支持基于重用的、开放的、不依赖于具体领域的可重用部件管理系统.     

Quality,productivity and economic benefits of software reuse: a review of industrial studies

Systematic software reuse is proposed to increase productivity and software quality and lead to economic benefits. Reports of successful software reuse programs in industry have been published. However, there has been little effort to organize the evidence systematically and appraise it. This review aims to assess the effects of software reuse in industrial contexts. Journals and major conferences between 1994 and 2005 were searched to find observational studies and experiments conducted in industry, returning eleven papers of observational type. Systematic software reuse is significantly related to lower problem (defect, fault or error) density in five studies and to decreased effort spent on correcting problems in three studies. The review found evidence for significant gains in apparent productivity in three studies. Other significant benefits of software reuse were reported in single studies or the results were inconsistent. Evidence from industry is sparse and combining results was done by vote-counting. Researchers should pay more attention to using comparable metrics, performing longitudinal studies, and explaining the results and impact on industry. For industry, evaluating reuse of COTS or OSS components, integrating reuse activities in software processes, better data collection and evaluating return on investment are major challenges.

Software reuse and competition: Consumer preferences in a software component market

Research on software reuse has traditionally focused on reuse among employees within the same organization. In contrast, our research investigates consumer preferences in a software component market with multiple producers and consumers of software components. We propose that empirically studying competition in software component markets is crucial to discovering success factors for improving software reuse. To facilitate such research, we have developed an experimental market laboratory called SofTrade; we report here the results of two empirical studies made possible by this environment. Our results support some existing reuse maxims, such as the concept that consumers prefer to reuse components that are general and flexible. Other established reuse beliefs are not supported by our results, such as the expectation that consumers will prefer objects with unique, complex features. Overall, the research reported here strongly supports the claim that the practice of exploring software reuse activity within real or artificial software component markets produces unique insights into how we can improve software reuse.     

The use of domain knowledge in program understanding

Program understanding is an essential part of all software maintenance and enhancement activities. As currently practiced, program understanding consists mainly of code reading. The few automated understanding tools that are actually used in industry provide helpful but relatively shallow information, such as the line numbers on which variable names occur or the calling structure possible among system components. These tools rely on analyses driven by the nature of the programming language used. As such, they are adequate to answer questions concerning implementation details, so called what questions. They are severely limited, however, when trying to relate a system to its purpose or requirements, the why questions. Application programs solve real‐world problems. The part of the world with which a particular application is concerned is that application's domain. A model of an application's domain can serve as a supplement to programming‐language‐based analysis methods and tools. A domain model carries knowledge of domain boundaries, terminology, and possible architectures. This knowledge can help an analyst set expectations for program content. Moreover, a domain model can provide information on how domain concepts are related. This article discusses the role of domain knowledge in program understanding. It presents a method by which domain models, together with the results of programming‐language‐based analyses, can be used to answers both what and why questions. Representing the results of domain‐based program understanding is also important, and a variety of representation techniques are discussed. Although domain‐based understanding can be performed manually, automated tool support can guide discovery, reduce effort, improve consistency, and provide a repository of knowledge useful for downstream activities such as documentation, reengineering, and reuse. A tools framework for domain‐based program understanding, a dowser, is presented in which a variety of tools work together to make use of domain information to facilitate understanding. Experience with domain‐based program understanding methods and tools is presented in the form of a collection of case studies. After the case studies are described, our work on domain‐based program understanding is compared with that of other researchers working in this area. The paper concludes with a discussion of the issues raised by domain‐based understanding and directions for future work. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Software quality through domain-;driven certification

Software reuse is being pursued in an attempt to improve programmer productivity. The concept of reuse is to permit various work products of software development to be used on more than one project in order to amortize their development costs. Productivity is not the only advantage of reuse although it is the most widely publicized. By incorporating reusable components into a new product, the components bring with them whatever qualities they possess, and these can contribute to the quality of the new product. This suggests that reuse might be exploited for achieving quality as an entirely separate goal from improving productivity. If useful properties pertaining to quality could be shown to be present in products as a direct result of software development based on reuse, this might be a cost-;effective way of achieving those qualities irrespective of the productivity advantages. The adjective certified is sometimes used to describe components that have been tested in some way prior to entry into a library but the term certified is not formally defined in the reuse literature. In this paper, we address the issue of certifying reusable components. We advocate the development of software by reuse with the specific intent of establishing as many of the required properties in the final product as possible by depending upon properties present in the reusable components. For this goal to succeed, a precise definition of certification of reusable components is required and such a definition is presented. The benefits of the definition and the way in which it supports the goal are explored.     

基于构件组装的信息处理软件开发方法

基于构件组装的软件开发方法被认为是提高软件开发效率和质量的有效途径,在软件开发中得到了越来越多的应用。文中分析了软件开发的现状,基于信息处理领域提出了一种构件组合式软件开发方法和适合这种开发方法的构件实现模型。介绍了这种构件组合式软件开发方法的基本实现原理,和在该方法指导下的软件开发过程。通过搭建一个实际的智能文本处理系统证明了该开发方法不仅简化了软件复用,提高了软件开发效率和质量,同时基于这种方法开发的软件具有较高运行效率。     

特定领域建模方法在管理信息系统开发中的应用

特定领域软件构架方法对于软件重用、软件可升级性和提高开发系列软件系统的效率都有重要的指导意义。该方法通过对特定领域的分析,获得典型的需求,并且构造该领域软件系统的参考构架。主要介绍分层系统的ＤＳＳＡ及获得此领域的参考构架,用参考构架模型进行描述,并给出了一个在实际系统开发过程中的应用实例。     

A Model-Based Approach to Object-Oriented Software Metrics

The need to improve software productivity and software quality has put forward the research on software metrics technology and the development of software metrics tool to support related activities.To support object-oriented software metrics practice efectively,a model-absed approach to object-oriented software metrics is proposed in this paper.This approach guides the metrics users to adopt the quality metrics model to measure the object-oriented software products .The development of the model can be achieved by using a top-down approach.This approach explicitly proposes the conception of absolute normalization computation and relative normalization computation for a metrics model.Moreover,a generic software metrics tool-Jade Bird Object-Oriented Metrics Tool(JBOOMT)is designed to implement this approach.The parser-based approach adopted by the tool makes the information of the source program accurate and complete for measurement.It supports various customizable hierarchical metrics models and provides a flexible user interface for users to manipulate the models.It also supports absolute and relative normalization mechanisms in different situations.     

A Case Study on Implementing Modularity in Software Development

In today’s business world, firms are facing pressures to reduce costs, enhance productivity, and maintain quality in new product development. Past studies have provided evidence that modularity can enhance performance of new product development. However, real-life cases on how to implement the concept of modularity are limited. This article aims to propose a model for modularity implementation in the context of embedded software development. The model was applied in a software company in Hong Kong. Results from the case company provide evidence that the average reuse rate of software modules increased from 31% to 71% after the implementation, with productivity increasing by 258%, cost reducing by 70%, and quality increasing by 72%. The practical implications are finally discussed.     

DSSRE：基于WWW的分布式软件重用支撑环境

软件重用被视为解决软件危机、提高软件生产率和质量的有效途径。传统的软件重用的活动仅限于机构或企业的内部,随着Internet应用的逐渐普及,WWW已经发展成为一个巨大的分布式信息空间,为用户提供了一个极具价值的信息源,也对软件重用技术产生了重大的影响。其跨平台、分布式的特点为软件重用的应用实践活动开辟了广阔的前景。文中提出了在WWW上开发软件重用环境的思想,并由此设计了DSSRE系统。该系统基于SSRE,并了一个分布式、面向对象的支持软件重用的开发环境。     

Reuse-based software production technology

Software reuse is viewed as a key technology to improve software product quality and productivity. This paper discusses a series of technologies related with software reuse and software component technology: component model, which describes component's essential characteristics; component acquisition technology, of which domain engineering is the main approach; component management technology, of which component library is the kernel; application integration and composition technology, of which application engineering is the main approach; software evolution technology, of which software reengineering is the main approach, etc. This paper introduces the software development environment: JadeBird Software Production Line System, which effectively integrates the above-mentioned technologies.     

一种基于特定领域的可信构件度量模型

基于构件的软件复用是提高软件生产率和软件质量的有效途径,并在计算机系统中得到了广泛的应用。随着软件质量需求的提高,可信构件的研究也越来越受重视。构件的可信度决定了软件质量的高低,只有高可信度的构件才能够满足高质量软件的需求。因此,本文基于ISO/IEC25010软件质量模型,并结合构件本身的质量特性及其所应用的领域特性,建立一种基于某个特定领域的可信构件度量模型。在此基础上深入探究其度量指标的分析及选择过程,并用形式化的方法描述该模型的可信性。      

星载软件复用技术探讨

星载软件的开发效率是制约卫星研制能力的因素之一,研究星载软件复用技术就是为了提高星载软件的开发效率和软件的质量;文中对星载软件复用的现状进行了分析,指出了影响星载软件复用的技术因素,探讨了实施星载软件复用的方法,并以举例的方式重点阐述了如何以领域工程的方式对星载软件进行领域分析、构造可复用构件和建立软件复用库;最后,介绍了软件沿用这一特殊的星载软件复用形式,这些方法都已进人实践阶段,具有一定的应用前景.