The Current State of CBSE

S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 1 9 9 8 I E E E S o f t w a r e 3 7 omponent-based software engineering is generating tremendous interest not just in the software community but in numerous industry sectors. Recent technology advances such as the Web, JavaBeans, ActiveX, and others spur this interest. But CBSE goes well beyond these technology enablers, as shown by the diverse perspectives brought to a recent workshop on CBSE, held in conjunction with the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering. This diversity also characterized a related ICSE panel discussion, “CBSE: Can it Change the Way of Software Development?” which generated active debate from a large audience. The discussion ranged from the theory of software reuse to the reality of commercial software markets, from available tools to future programming language mechanisms, and from practical testing to rigorous formal specification. In both the ICSE panel and the CBSE workshop, divergent perspectives at times threatened to blur CBSE’s conceptual outlines. Does this diversity imply that we are exploring the same basic CBSE concepts from many different points of view? Or are we exploring fundamentally different or unrelated concepts that we capriciously label CBSE? Alan W. Brown, Sterling Software Kurt C. Wallnau, Software Engineering Institute The Current State of CBSE As organizat ions adopt comp onent-based so f t ware engineer ing, i t b ecomes essent ia l to c learly def ine i t s charac ter i s t i cs, advantages, and organizat iona l impl icat ions. Th is rep or t presents key d i scuss ion p oints f rom a workshop on CBSE and prov ides a use fu l synthes i s o f par t i c ipants’ d iverse p ersp ec t ives and exp er iences.