Kurt C. Wallnau

AGORA: a search engine for software components

Using JavaBeans and CORBA agents in conjunction with Web search technologies, this prototype search engine (Agora), automatically generates and indexes a worldwide database of software products, classified by component model. Users of Agora can search for components in this database by describing specific properties of a components interface. The system combines Web search engines with an introspection process. Introspection, primarily associated with JavaBeans, describes the capability of components to provide information about their own interfaces. The Common Object Request Broker Architecture offers a similar capability, although this data is maintained external to the CORBA server in an interface repository.

A basis for evaluation of commercial software

The genesis of this paper lies in our observation that there are almost as many perspectives on the topic of software evaluation as there are evaluation techniques. Is this diversity an inherent characteristic of software evaluation itself, or is it reflective of the confusion found in an immature discipline? We believe that both are substantially true. In this paper we first state why we believe the conceptual space of software evaluation is so broad. We then develop some basic principles that provide structure and boundaries to this conceptual space. Although these principles apply to the evaluation of commercial-off-the-shelf software in particular, we believe they have relevance to the topic of software evaluation in general.

The ComFoRT reasoning framework

Model checking is a promising technology for verifying critical behavior of software. However, software model checking is hamstrung by scalability issues and is difficult for software engineers to use directly. The second challenge arises from the gap between model checking concepts and notations, and those used by engineers to develop large-scale systems. ComFoRT [15] addresses both of these challenges. It provides a model checker, Copper, that implements a suite of complementary complexity management techniques to address state space explosion. But ComFoRT is more than a model checker. The ComFoRTreasoning framework includes additional support for building systems in a particular component-based idiom. This addresses transition issues.

4th ICSE workshop on component-based software engineering: component certification and system prediction

This workshop brings together researchers from the areas of component trust and certification, component technology, and software architecture. The goal of this workshop is to ensure that work in the areas of certification of software components and architectural analysis for prediction of system quality attributes will be mutually aware, if not mutually reinforcing. The output of the workshop will be a defined set of community model problems that reflects this intersection of interests.

Past and future models of CASE integration

Two key approaches to building integrated software development environments are analyzed. They are the integrated project support environments (IPSE) approach, and the computer-aided software engineering (CASE) coalitions approach. The strengths and limitations of these approaches are discussed, leading to the definition of a model of integration that separates process, end-user service, and mechanism concepts, relating them in a three-schema view of integration similar to the ANSI/SPARC database model. This model provides the basis for a deeper understanding of integration issues within a SDE, and points the way toward an architecture for future SDEs that combines the benefits of the IPSE and CASE coalition approaches.<<ETX>>

Understanding integration in a software development environment

There has been a great deal of interest in recent years on the concept of a software development environment (SDE) as a complete, unifying framework of services supporting most (or all) phases of software development and maintenance. As a large, complex artifact composed of a number of software components, and interacting closely with human aspects of the software development process, The authors believe a systems integration perspective is appropriate in understanding this work. By taking this approach they identify three levels at which the issue of integration in a SDE arises as a key concept-at the mechanism level (interoperability of the hardware and basic software), at the end-user services level (combining the methods and paradigms of the various tools), and at the process level (adapting end-user services to the working practices of different users, projects and organizations). The authors examine SDEs from an integration perspective, describing the previous work in this area, and analyzing the integration issues that must be addressed in an SDE. For illustrative purposes, a particular focus of the paper is the configuration management aspects of a SDE.<<ETX>>

Ensembles: abstractions for a new class of design problem

Trends in component-based software development point to increased use of pre-existing or purchased components. A consequence of this type of development is that systems are being composed of large-grained components over which the developer wields little control. This and other issues related to the use of commercial components has created a new class of design problem that is not addressed by traditional development methods and tools. In this paper we describe this class of design problem, and introduce Ensemble, a conceptual language that supports assembling software systems from commercial components.

A situated evaluation of the Object Management Group's (OMG) Object Management Architecture (OMA)

It has been difficult to objectively assess the real value or maturity of the Object Management Groups Object Management Architecture (OMA). While experience reports have appeared in the literature, these have focused more on the functionality of the end-system than on systematically exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the OMA, and providing practical guidelines on the effective use of the OMA for specific software-engineering problems. In this paper we describe a case study in the use of the OMA to integrate legacy software components into a distributed object system. We assess the OMA in this problem context, and indicate strengths and weaknesses of the specification and current implementations. We extrapolate our experience to a broader class of component-based software systems, and recommend an architectural strategy for the effective use of the OMA to this class of systems.

International workshop on component-based software engineering

This article is a report on the 5th international workshop devoted to the Fractal component model that took place the 4th of July 2006 in Nantes, France, as an ECOOP workshop. Prior to that, the article provides some background on the Fractal project and previous Fractal workshops for readers who are not familiar with Fractal.

Custom vs. off-the-shelf architecture

Members of the COTS-based system initiative at the Software Engineering Institute have developed the Generic Enterprise Ensemble (GEE), a generic approach to building distributed, transaction based, secure enterprise information systems (EIS). GEE is a tool to help in the selection of technologies and architectural choices when building enterprise information systems. Enterprise JavaBeans/sup TM/ (EJB) is a specification from Sun Microsystems for an application server based on Java technology. a comparison is made between GEE based solutions and off-the-shelf solutions based on the EJB specification.