John C. Dean

A Process for COTS Software Product Evaluation

The growing use of commercial products in large systems makes evaluation and selection of appropriate products an increasingly essential activity. However, many organizations struggle in their attempts to select an appropriate product for use in systems. As part of a cooperative effort, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and the National Research Council Canada (NRC) have defined a tailorable software product evaluation process that can support organizations in making carefully reasoned and sound product decisions. This paper describes that process.

The Limitations of Current Decision-Making Techniques in the Procurement of COTS Software Components

The fundamentals of good decision-making are, first, a clear understanding of the decision itself and second the availability of properly focused information to support the decision. Decision-making techniques help with both these problems. However, the techniques should be thought of as aids to decision-making and not the substitutes for it. Numerous decision-making techniques have been proposed as effective methods of ranking software products for selection for use as components in large-scale systems. Many of these techniques have been developed and successfully applied in other arenas and have been either used directly or adapted to be applied to COTS product evaluation and selection. This paper will show that many of these techniques are not valid when applied in this manner. We will describe an alternate requirements-driven technique that could be more effective.

Building maintainable COTS based systems

Maintaining large software systems based on Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components is a major cost driver for these systems. Maintenance includes activities from component replacement to trouble-shooting and configuration management. The maintenance costs for COTS based software systems can be reduced by building systems according to specific design criteria. This paper identifies the major activities of a system maintainer, describes the properties that can be designed into a system to facilitate these activities, and outlines a checklist of items that can be verified during a design or code review, or during the evaluation of a COTS components in order to guarantee these properties are built into the system. The verification is illustrated using a photo imaging system that is currently under development.

Ensuring the capability of COTS products

The question of how a systems integrator can acquire a reasonable level of confidence in the robustness and applicability of any COTS product is one of the key concerns of researchers dealing with COTS based software systems. This assurance must be gained before the COTS product is selected for inclusion in the final system. The author proposes that we examine three main areas of interest dealing with COTS selection (legal, management and technical issues). He argues that direct, detailed examination provides the most practical timely data that will allow integrators to verify that particular COTS products can perform the tasks that are required, within the overall system context.

COTS Workshop: continuing collaborations for successful COTS development

COTS Workshop: Continuing Collaborations for Successful COTS Development John Dean, National Research of Council Canada fJohn.Dean@nrc.ca} Patricia Oberndorf, Software Engineering Institute {po(~_sei.cmu.edu} Mark Vigder, National Research Council Canada fMark.Viader~_nrc.ca~ Chris Abts, University of Southern California {cabts~sunset.usc.edu} Hakan Erdogmus, National Research Council of Canada {Hakan.Erdogmus~nrc.ca} Nell Maiden, City University, UK fN.A.M.Maiden(~citv.ac.uk} Michael Looney, DERA, UK fmiloonev@dra.hmo.ab} George Heineman, Worcester Polytechnic Institute {heineman(~cs.wpi.edu} Michael Guntersdorfer, University of California, Irvine fmQunters~uci.edu}