Towards a CBSE framework for enhancing software reuse: Matching component properties using semi-formal specifications and ontologies

Abstract

A novel Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) framework is proposed in this work that focuses on enhancing the reuse process by offering support for locating appropriate components. The architecture of the framework comprises of five interrelated layers, namely Description, Location, Analysis, Recommendation and Build. The scope of this work is to describe in detail the first and third layers, and provide the means to evaluate the suitability of candidate software components for reuse. The overall aim is to facilitate components’ profiling and offer efficient matching of system and software requirements to increase the reusability potential of components. A specifications profile is created for each component using a semi-formal natural language that describes certain properties. A dedicated parser recognizes parts of the profile and translates them into instance values of a dedicated CBSE ontology that encodes these properties. Matching is then performed at the level of ontology instances between the available components and the components required by the developer. The framework recommends components based on a suitability ratio that calculates their distances from the desired properties.