Reusing Analogous Components

Using formal speciications to represent software components facilitates the determination of reusability because they more precisely characterize the functionality of the software, and the well-deened syntax makes processing amenable to automation. This paper presents an approach, based on formal methods, to the search, retrieval, and modiication of reusable software components. From a two-tiered hierarchy of reusable software components, the existing components that are analogous to the query speciication are retrieved from the hierarchy. The speciication for an analogous retrieved component is compared to the query speciication to determine what changes need to be applied to the corresponding program component in order to make it satisfy the query speciication. This paper also describes an approach for assisting the modiication of analogous components and gives an example to demonstrate its use.