S V E N F O R T U I N ( 3 4 9 6 4 6 5 )

A Method for Compatible COTS Component Selection

BARRY BOEHMU N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N

C A L I F O R N I AJESAL BHUTA

U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A

A Method for Compatible COTS Component Selection

Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS)

Part of the UCS spiral COTS Based Application (CBA) Framework (Boehm et al., 2003)

CBA is defined as “a system for which 30% of the end-user functionality is provided by COTS components, and at least 10% of the development effort is devoted to COTS considerations”

Bad experiences compatibility

Process-Deliverable Diagram

Example (1/10)

Watch vendorOnline shopCOTS Based Application (CBA)

Example (2/10)

0: Create Objectives, Constraints & Priorities (OC&Ps) Automatic generation of invoices Automatic inventory update Automated order processing Sending order and shipping confirmation Online shopping cart

Example (3/10)

1: Identify Candidate Components Cart 32 MSSQL Danise Cart Microsoft IIS Apache-CGI X-Hub Enterprise Cart MySQL Apache-Tomcat

Example (4/10)

2: Classify Components into Function Groups

Function group:

Database Applications

Shopping Carts

Application Servers

COTS component:

MySQL Cart 32 Microsoft IIS

COTS component:

MS-Access Danise Cart Apache-CGI

COTS component:

MSSQL X-Hub Enterprise Cart

Apache Tomcat

Example (5/10)

3: Evaluate Components X-Hub Enterprise Apache Tomcat Danise Cart Microsoft IIS

4: Buy Information Vendor suportability

Example (6/10)

3: Evaluate Components X-Hub Enterprise Apache Tomcat Danise Cart Microsoft IIS

4: Buy Information Vendor suportability

Example (7/10)

5: Filter out alternatives

Function group:

Database Applications

Shopping Carts

Application Servers

COTS component:

MySQL Cart 32 Microsoft IIS

COTS component:

MS-Access Danise Cart Apache-CGI

COTS component:

MSSQL - -

Example (8/10)

6: Evaluate Combinations Component Compatibilty Evaluation Framework

7: Create prototypes Programming Glueware

Example (9/10)

6: Evaluate Combinations Component Compatibilty Evaluation Framework

7: Create prototypes MSSQL Cart 32 Microsoft IIS

Example (10/10)

8: Preserve combinations Word document

9: Choose combinations MSSQL – Cart 32 – Microsoft IIS

Limitations (1/2)

Max 3 function groups

Limitations (2/2)

Limitation on number of components

Related Literature (1/2)

28% CBA projects in 1997 (Boehm et al., 2003) 60% CBA projects in 2001 (Boehm et al., 2003)

Case study (Garlan et al., 1995) Quadruple in time Five times the anticipated costs

Glueware (Basili and Boehm, 2001) One line of glueware Three times the effort per line of developed

application code

Related Literature (2/2)

Incompatibilty problems (Gacek, 1998; Gacek and Boehm, 1998; Yakimovich, Travassos and Basili, 1999) Architectual mismatch Interface conflicts Functional mismatch Non-functional mismatch

CRE method (Alves and Castro, 2001) Domain coverage Time restriction Costs rating Vendor guaranties

References

Alves, C., & Castro, J. (2001). CRE: A systematic method for COTS components selection. Proceedings of the XV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 193-207.

Basili, V. R., & Boehm, B. (2001). COTS-based systems top 10 list. Computer, 34(5), 91-95.

Bhuta, J., & Boehm, B. (2005). A method for compatible cots component selection. COTS-Based Software Systems, 3412, 132-143. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-30587-3_23

Boehm, B., Port, D., Yang, Y., & Bhuta, J. (2003). Composable process elements for developing COTS-based applications. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, Los Angeles, California, USA, 8-17.

Gacek, C. (1998). Detecting architectural mismatches during systems composition. California, Los Angeles: University of Southern California.

Garlan, D., Allen, R., & Ockerbloom, J. (1995). Architectural mismatch: Why reuse is so hard. IEEE Software, 12(6), 17-26. doi:10.1109/MS.2009.86

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