Reuse concepts and a reuse support repository

Abstract

If we want to create a Reuse Environment for Software Engineers we have to concentrate on both the technical drawbacks of such a complex environment as well as on the Software Engineers themselves. Reuse is not just a new mode or a simple development technique. Reuse is both a technology of producing software and a philosophy of work. A successful Reuse Environment is based on a powerful Reuse database-we will refer to it as "the Repository": on the proper education of Software Engineers (in order for them to be able to exploit the power of the Repository and to adopt a Reuse culture) and on the proper preparation of work environments; organisational infrastructures and reuse motives. In this paper, we propose a Repository architecture capable of storing and processing reusable objects of any kind. This Repository covers the whole life-cycle of a software product; it supports different life-cycle themes, user-defined store and identification characteristics, semantic similarity mechanisms and linear and hierarchical relations among the stored objects. It also supports modelling of life-cycle procedures and products in simple and complex reuse structures, based on the needs of everyday development tasks. We describe its internal organisation and we propose a work approach for the best exploitation of its capabilities. Finally, we examine what this Repository can offer to the software engineering industry according to the Humphrey maturity levels for the software production processes.