A development process for component software with crosscutting and dynamic features

Abstract

Traditional development processes fail to be applied effectively to the development of component software. Some features in the design need to be (un)plugged dynamically to software systems and their implementations may require to crosscut the code of components. This is often not possible in component systems due to the nature of used components (black box, signed or encrypted components). In this paper we propose an appropriate process for the development of component software with explicit support for crosscutting and dynamic features. The proposed process covers all software lifecycle activities, follows a top-down approach and stimulates the reuse of pre-existing components. In the proposal, crosscutting and dynamic features are identified earlier in the process and modeled separately using aspect-orientation concepts for reusablity and maintainability purposes. The identification of crosscutting and dynamic features at early stages allows making proper design decisions to improve software modularity and reusability, manage feature conflicts and ensure better maintainability of component software. The proposed process is validated through modeling a case study.