Process of Software Reuse :

PROCESS OF REUSE

Experience has shown that reuse is not merely creating a repository, having engineers deposit assets and hoping that other engineers will reuse the repository's contents. Rather, successful implementation of reuse requires an infrastructure to support reuse. A critical aspect of the infrastructure is the process of reuse.

Process of Software Reuse

In its simplest form, the process of reuse consists of four major activities: manage the reuse infrastructure (MRI), produce reusable assets (PRA), broker reusable assets (BRA) and consume reusable assets (CRA).

A few terms are defined to facilitate our discussion: Producers are those who create reusable assets with the specific goal of reusability. Consumers are those who use reusable assets to produce enduser products or further reusable assets. Each of the four major activities are now briefly defined.

The function of Manage the Reuse Infrastructure (MRI) is to establish the reuse rules, roles, and goals in the infrastructure to support reuse. MRI drives the reuse process. This includes designating conventions and standards; approving additions, deletions, and changes to the library; commissioning component construction; coordinating schedules and resources and aligning reuse goals to business goals. This function also establishes and awards incentives, interprets metrics data, and implements economic models. Overall, MRI is responsible for the planning of the reuse effort.

The Produce Reusable Assets (PRA) activity develops, generates, or reengineers assets with the specific goal of reusability. PRA includes domain analysis and domain engineering. Domain Analysis is the process of identifying, collecting, organizing, analyzing and representing the commonality and variability among systems in an application domain and software architecture from the study of existing systems, underlying theory, emerging technology and development theories within the domain of interest. Domain Engineering is the construction of components, methods, and tools and their supporting documentation to solve the problems of system/subsystem development by the application of the knowledge in the domain model and software architectures.

The Broker Reusable Assets (BRA) activity aids the reuse effort by qualifying or certifying, configuring, maintaining, promoting and brokering reusable assets. This process also includes classification and retrieval for assets in the reuse library.

The Consume Reusable Assets (CRA) activity occurs when systems are produced using reusable assets. Users utilize the library and associated tools to gain an understanding of the reusable assets available to them; identify and retrieve needed components; integrate the components into their system; and provide feedback to the librarian on existing and needed components.