Elastic Components: Addressing Variance of Quality Properties in Components (original) (raw)

The quality properties of a software component, although verified by the component developer and even certified by a trusted third-party, might very well be inappropriate for the requirements of a new system. This is what we call the quality mismatch problem: the mismatch between the quality requirements of a new system with the quality properties exhibited by the components that we want to use for its development. This work contributes to the understanding of the quality mismatch problem between component properties and component-based systems requirements. To solve this problem we introduce the concept of elastic components. An elastic component is an open-ended hierarchy of the same pure component with variants that differ between them to the quality properties that they exhibit. We present a quality-driven design approach that can be effectively applied for the design and implementation of elastic components.

Component-based software development is being identified as the emerging method of developing complex applications consisting of heterogeneous systems. Although more research attention has been given to Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components, original software ...

In Component Based Software Development (CBSD), applications are built from existing components either by assembling or replacing software parts. Reusing components may lead to faster software development and subsequently reduce cost and provide higher product quality. In CBSD, software component models define what components are and how they compose. However, no research has been done to assess the quality of software component models, to assess the characteristics of software component design. This paper proposed a software component quality model specifically to answer the question what characteristics make good component. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) has been conducted by defining a robust protocol that combines automatic searches from different sources. The finding of the SLR has contributed to the development of quality model for CBSD, i.e. a proposed component quality model with metrics which is specific to software component design.