Duane Hybertson

Maintenance of COTS-intensive software systems

The software industry has made extensive use of commercial software tools such as compilers and editors in development environments of computer-based systems for several decades. However, in recent years an emerging trend is the extensive use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software products as a major part of delivered software systems. It is generally recognized that this trend introduces a significant change to the development of computer-based systems. The thrust of this paper is that this trend also introduces a significant change to the software maintenance process. The paper addresses some of the issues involved in the maintenance of COTS-intensive software systems, and the reasons why the COTS factor constitutes a significant change from traditional software maintenance processes. Finally, some lessons learned are offered as suggestions for addressing the issues in the maintenance of COTS-intensive systems.

Implementing Large-Scale COTS Reengineering within the United States Department of Defense

This paper reports on empirical research into the organizational and process changes necessary to implement large-scale reengineering using COTS. The research goal is to identify how these changes can be effected within the context of the existing United States Department of Defense acquisition management, requirements management, and planning, programming, and budgeting systems. While this effort is still in its early stages, initial results indicate that there are significant challenges in developing and defending budget inputs to support an evolutionary COTS-oriented acquisition model. At the same time, recent changes in acquisition constraints and other mitigating circumstances are being exploited to improve the likelihood of success.

Using a Specification Approach to Facilitate Component Testing

This chapter does not describe a component test method directly, but rather it describes an approach to specification of components and system architectures that is intended to facilitate component user testing. The approach is a synthesis of specification ideas that are known individually—such as Design by Contract, explicit dependencies, quality of service, cost of service—but are not being followed collectively in practice. The argument is that clearer specification content and structure by system architects and COTS component vendors enables more efficient and effective component search, selection, and testing in component-based systems. Further, the approach here includes component specification variations that facilitate both consideration of the maximum number of candidate components for a given system and the maximum market for a given component. These are achieved through generalizing specifications while retaining precision. A test structure is given that shows how the approach can be used for component testing and integration, and a simple example illustrates the approach.