Component-based Software Development: Case Studies

Component-based software development (CBD) is an emerging discipline that promises to take software engineering into a new era. Building on the achievements of object-oriented software construction, CBD aims to deliver software engineering from a cottage industry into an industrial age for Information Technology, wherein software can be assembled from components, in the manner that hardware systems are currently constructed from kits of parts. This volume provides a survey of the current state of CBD, as reflected by activities that have been taking place recently under the banner of CBD, with a view to giving pointers to future trends. The contributions report case studies - self-contained, fixed-term investigations with a finite set of clearly defined objectives and measurable outcomes - on a sample of the myriad aspects of CBD. The book includes chapters dealing with COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) components; methodologies for CBD; compositionality, i.e. how to calculate or predict properties of a composite from those of its constituents; component software testing; and grid computing.