Component-Based Software Engineering: a Quantitative Approach
Miguel Goulão, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Objectives: Our objective is to develop a quantitative approach to CBD assessment. The approach must be generic with respect to the underlying component model, and support automated assessment of both software components and component assemblies.
Method: We represent components and component assemblies using an appropriate metamodel (e.g. UML 2.0, CCM). Instantiations of this metamodel (the components, or component assemblies to be assessed) are traversed using OCL expressions, to collect quantitative metrics that are analyzed according to a quality model.
Results: Our formalization approach mitigates several shortcomings identified in previous attempts to the quantitative assessment of CBD. It is suitable for the development of tool support for the assessment that integrates well with current development environments. We plan to develop and validate a quality model (and a set of metrics to assess components and assemblies with it) for CBD.
Conclusions: With this ongoing work, we expect to contribute to the adoption of quantitative methods in the formal assessment of the architecture of component-based software systems.
