ABOUT THIS BOOK
Outstanding Features
1. A comprehensive and detailed way to show the software reuse and component-based development areas, discussing their roots, the developments performed and open issues for research and development;
2. Analysis of:
a. the relevance of reuse metrics, their weak and strong points;
b. the problems and approaches involving component search and retrieval;
3. Discussions around:
a. the state-of-the-art in the software reuse process area;
b. the role played by reuse repositories in reuse processes, the current solutions and a set of requirements for reuse repositories;
4. Roadmaps involving:
a. reverse engineering and software reengineering areas, including discussions on how should be an efficient approach to perform it; and
5. Surveys including:
a. the state-of-the-art of the component certification area, showing the evolution, the processes and the failure cases.
What problem does this book solve?
Among other considerations, the book provides answers to the following questions:
• What are the origins of software reuse? Which are the success and failure factors, the industrial results and projects around the world and the directions for future development?
• Which are the foundations and techniques of software reuse? How are these techniques organized?
• Which software reuse processes exist? How are they organized? Which are their strong and weak points?
• How to measure the benefits of software reuse? Which kind of metrics should be considered?
• How to achieve quality in reusable assets? How a reusable asset could be certified, following well-defined standards?
• How to find, search and retrieve reusable assets?
• What kinds of tools are used in software reuse? Are they useful?
What's unique about the book?
The book contains an extremely through review and analysis of the software reuse field, by collecting and organizing the major research works into a picture of the state-of-the-art. However, this book is much more than just a very thorough compendium of reuse research: this book focuses on issues ranging from technology to management and even human behavior. Each issue was reviewed by many experts, and with the benefit of the lessons and detailed information contained in the book, readers will step to a new level of understanding of the systematic processes and tools that are needed in order to successfully promote reuse in their organization.
What's different compared to other books on software reuse?
When we decided to write this book, we observed that we had read and discussed all the main papers and books related to software reuse in seminars, discussions or software reuse courses. However, the published books in the area did not present in an integrated framework aspects related to software reuse. The books covered
some aspects in an isolated way, while in our research and industrial vision we needed books that included the roots of reuse, the failure and successes cases, the myths, the industrial projects around the world, and the methods, processes, metrics and tools to achieve a proper degree of reuse. In this context, we wrote a book to be used by practitioners, software reuse researchers, lecturers and students alike, that can be seen as – maybe – the first to present a global picture of the area.
Benefits for the audience
After reading the book, the audience will be able to answer the following questions:
1. What to do and what not to do in a software reuse program deployment? What should be avoided for achieving the success? Which combinations of technical (processes, methods, techniques, tools, among others) and non-technical (education, management, culture, among others) aspects are essential for software reuse success?
2. Which software reuse processes exist today (
for reuse,
with reuse, software reengineering) and which are their essentials, gaps and lacks?
3. Which metrics are essential in the software reuse context and what kind of measurements are well-suited for software reuse?
4. Which are the road (s) that reusable assets certification is following?
5. Which requirements are essential for a well-defined reuse assets repository?
