Encapsulating an engineering calculus environment in a reusable component framework

In many scientific and engineering domains it is necessary to develop specific software to solve complex problems. Nowadays a lot of complex algorithms and required functionalities are already provided by de facto standard CAD, CAE or CAM environments in several domains. But they often are inadequate in other concerns, particularly when specific user interfaces or integration with other systems are needed. To reuse their required functionality without those drawbacks, component-based software development appears as an interesting technology. It guaranties a faster and lower-cost development of ad-hoc software solutions, and a higher quality. Anyway, just by providing the desired functions, a software environment is not automatically a fully reusable component. In addition, some very specific features are necessary. A solution can be to encapsulate those robust software environments including their large functionality into a framework that provides fully reusable components. Even more, beyond local software development, nowadays it could be very interesting to support distributed applications development. This work presents a concrete application of that solution: a software component framework that encapsulates Matlab - a widely used system of the engineering domain - as a true set of object-oriented components. The described framework permits the developer to reuse Matlab in local and distributed application development. This framework is developed using .NET technology, being accessible within .NET software development environments, what allows the usage of the component in design-time development