An Empirical Study to Compare Three Methods for Selecting Cots Software Components

Component Based Software Developers are faced with the challenge of selecting appropriate Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products, because the marketplace is characterized by a variety of products and product claims, extreme quality and capability differences between products, and many products incompatibilities. Although a multiplicity of COTS selection method have been proposed in literature, most developer still select COTS products using ad hoc methods. One of the main reason being, COTS selection method do not provide all or most of the required support and guidance required for carrying out the COTS selection process. Moreover, literature on COTS selection methods rarely mentions the limitations of the methods. Therefore, we carried out an empirical study to compare three COTS selection methods; the process and results of the study are presented in this paper. The main objective of the study was to point out the differences between the COTS selection methods, that is if any existed, and to determine the ability of each of the methods to provide adequate COTS selection support and guidance. The ability of a method to provide adequate COTS selection support and guidance was measured in terms of the user satisfaction and confidence in the selection process, as well as in the results of the process.