An investigation into tool support for the development of reusable software

The demands for software systems have been increasing worldwide and advances a software productivity have been insufficient to meet these demands. Software component reuse can make an important contribution to significant gains in productivity. However, to achieve its full potential, objective and automatable reuse guidelines are needed to support the designers of reusable components. We know clearly the difficulties that are faced when trying to reuse a component that is not designed for reuse. Therefore, the emphasis of the research described here is on design for reuse rather than design with reuse. Design for reuse is a process of creating potentially reusable components. To create such reusable components we need to define the characteristics, for which a set of practical and objective reuse guidelines has been formulated (a practical step that has been taken in this project on reuse guidelines). An approach has been taken to support the process of design for reuse, based on language-oriented reusability (automating a language support for reuse) and domain-oriented reusability for which a domain analysis technique is used (automating a domain support for reuse). Domain modelling is done using generic component templates. The language chosen is Ada, and the application domain chosen is components of abstract data structures for which a classification scheme is proposed. A prototype system has been developed, the reuse assessor and improver system (RAIS), to support the process of design for reuse. The system takes an Ada component and estimates its reusability strength according to how well it satisfies the reuse guidelines for which a grading system is proposed and generates that component which is improved for reuse. The system produces assessment reports, interacts with the user, provides reusability analysis and advice, and does various structure transformations. Software reuse improvement has a goal of transforming an assessed component into a component that is improved for reuse automatically, based on language-oriented and domain-oriented reusability. This research has demonstrated that practical and objective reuse guidelines can be formulated, and these reuse guidelines are at last partially automatable.