Software Reuse

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 1

 Software reuse

In most engineering disciplines, systems are
designed by composing existing components
that have been used in other systems.

Software engineering has been more focused
on original development but it is now
recognised that to achieve better software,
more quickly and at lower cost, we need to
adopt a design process that is based on
systematic software reuse.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 2

Reuse-based software engineering
 Application system reuse
• The whole of an application system may be reused
either by incorporating it without change into other
systems (COTS reuse) or by developing application
families.
 Component reuse
• Components of an application from sub-systems to
single objects may be reused.
 Object and function reuse
• Software components that implement a single well-
defined object or function may be reused.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 3

 Reuse benefits 1

Increased dependability Reused software, that has been tried and tested in working systems,
should be m ore dependable than new software. The initial use of the
software reveals any design and implementation faults. These are then
fixed, thus reducing the number of failures when the software is reused.
Reduced process risk If software exists, there is less uncertainty in the costs of reusing that
software than in the costs of development. This is an important factor
for project management as it reduces the margin of error in project cost
estimation. This is particularly true when relatively large software
components such as sub-systems are reused.
Effective use of specialists Instead of application specialists doing the same work on different
projects, these specialists can develop reusable software that
encapsulate their knowledge.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 4

 Reuse benefits 2

Standards compliance Some standards, such as user interface standards, can be

implemented as a set of standard reusable components. For
example, if menus in a user interfaces are implemented using
reusable components, all applications present the same menu
formats to users. The use of standard user interfaces improves
dependability as users are less likely to make mistakes when
presented with a familiar interface.
Accelerated development Bringing a system to market as early as possible is o ften more
important than overall development costs. Reusing software can
speed up system production because both development and
validation time should be reduced.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 5

 Reuse problems 1

Increased maintenance If the source code of a reused software system or component is n ot

costs available then maintenance costs may be increased as the reused
elements of the system may become increasingly incompatible with
system changes.
Lack of tool support CASE toolsets may not support development with reuse. It may be
difficult or impossible to integrate these tools with a component
library system. The software process assumed by these tools may not
take reuse into account.
Not-invented-here Some software engineers sometimes prefer to re-write components as
syndrome they believe that they can improve on the reusable component. This is
partly to do with trust and partly to do with the fact that writing
original software is s een as more challenging than reusing other
peopleÕs software.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 6

 Reuse problems 2

Creating and maintaining a Populating a reusable component library and ensuring the software
component library developers can use this library can be expensive. Our current techniques
for classifying, cataloguing and retrieving software components are
immature.
Finding, understanding and Software components have to be discovered in a library, understood and,
adapting reusable components sometimes, adapted to work in a n ew environment. Engineers must be
reasonably confident of finding a component in the library before they will
make routinely include a component search as part of their normal
development process.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 7

 The reuse landscape

Although reuse is often simply thought of as
the reuse of system components, there are
many different approaches to reuse that may
be used.

Reuse is possible at a range of levels from
simple functions to complete application
systems.

The reuse landscape covers the range of
possible reuse techniques.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 8

 The reuse landscape

Design
patterns

Component Application
frameworks product lines Aspect-oriented
software development

Component-based COTS Prog ram

development integ ration generators
Legacy system
wrapping
Configurable ver tical
applications
Service-oriented
systems
Prog ram
libraries

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 9

 Reuse planning factors

The development schedule for the software.

The expected software lifetime.

The background, skills and experience of the
development team.

The criticality of the software and its non-
functional requirements.

The application domain.

The execution platform for the software.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 10

 Software product lines

Software product line is a set of applications with
common architecture and shared components with
each application specialized to reflect different
requirements.


Software product lines usually emerge from existing
applications.

 The core system is designed to configure and adapt

to suit the needs of different system customers

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 11

 
Adaptation may involve:
• Component and system configuration;
• Adding new components to the system;
• Selecting from a library of existing components;
• Modifying components to meet new requirements.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 12

 Software product lines
specialisation
 Platform specialisation
• Different versions of the application are developed for
different platforms.
(eg. Windows, Mac OS and linux platforms)

 Environment specialisation
• Different versions of the application are created to
handle different operating environments
(e.g. System for emergency services may exist in
different versions based on different types of
communication equipment.)

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 13

  Functional specialisation
• Different versions of the application are created for
customers with different requirements.
(eg. library automation system may be modified based
on public library, reference library, university library etc)

 Process specialisation
• Different versions of the application are created to
support different business processes.
(eg. Ordering system may be centralized in one
company and distributed process in another)

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 14

 COTS product reuse
 COTS - Commercial Off-The-Shelf systems.
 COTS systems are usually complete
application systems that offer an API
(Application Programming Interface).
 COTS product is a software system that can
be adapted to the needs of different
customers without changing the source code
of the system.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 15

  Virtually all desktop software and wide variety of
server products are COTS Software.


COTS products are adapted by using built-in
configuration mechanisms that allow the functionality
of the system to be tailored to specific customer
needs.

 The key benefit is faster application development

and, usually, lower development costs.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 16

 Types of COTS Product reuse

COTS-Solution systems
COTS-Solution systems consist of a generic
application from a single vendor that is
configured to customer requirements


COTS –Integrated systems

Involves integrating two or more COTS
systems(perhaps from different vendors) to
create an application system

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 17

 COTS-Solution systems


Single product that provides the functionality
required by a customer

Based around a generic solution and
standardized processes.

Focus is on system configuration

System vendor is responsible for maintenance

System vendor provides platform for the
system.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 18

 COTS –Integrated systems


Several heterogeneous system products are
integrated to provide customized functionality

Flexible solutions may be developed for
customer processes

Development focus is on system integration

System owner is responsible for maintenance

System owner provides the platform for the
system

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 18 Slide 19