A Multilevel Representation of Repository forSoftware Reuse
C.V.Guru RaoProfessor & Head
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
SR Engineering college, Warangal,Andhra Pradesh, India
–
506 371guru_cv_rao@hotmail.com
P.Niranjan
Associate Professor,Department of Computer Science and Engineering,Kakatiya Institute of Technology and ScienceWarangal, Andhra Pradesh, India
–
506 015npolala@yahoo.co.in
Abstract--
Effective software Reuse will be due toclassification schemes used on software componentsthat are stored into and retrieve from a softwarerepository.This work proposes a new methodology for efficientclassification and retrieval of multimedia softwarecomponents based on user requirements by usingattribute and faceted classification schemes.Whenever a user desires to trace a component withspecified characteristics (Attributes) are identifiedand then compared with the characteristics of theexisting components in repositories to retrieverelevant components. A web based software tooldeveloped here to classify the multimedia softwarecomponents is more efficient.
Keywords: Software Reuse, Classification Schemes, Reuse Repository.
I.
INTRODUCTIONSoftware reuse is the use of engineeringknowledge or artifacts from existing softwarecomponents to build a new system [11]. There aremany work products that can be reused, such assource code, designs, specifications, architecturesand documentation. The most common reuseproduct is source code.Software components provide a vehicle forplanned and systematic reuse. Nowadays, the termcomponent is used as a synonym for object most of the time, but it also stands for module or function.Recently the term component-based or component-oriented software development has becomepopular. Systematic software reuse influence thewhole software engineering process. The ability todevelop the new web based applications with in ashort time is crucial to the software companies.For this reason it is vital to share and reuse theefficient programming experiences as well asknowledge in a productive manner.A software component is a well-defined unit of software that has a published interface and can beused in conjunction with components to form largerunit [3].To incorporate reusable components intosystems, programmers must be able to find andunderstand them. If this process fails, then reusecannot happen. Thus, to represent thesecomponents and index them is a challenge.Therefore to find them easily and understand thefunction are two important issues in creating asoftware tool for software reuse. Classifyingsoftware component allows reusers to organizecollections of components into structures that theycan search easily. Successful reuse requires properclassification and retrieval mechanisms to possess awide variety of high quality components that areunderstandable.Multimedia technology enables information tobe stored in a variety of formats. Therefore veryeffective presentation of software components canbe made. Understanding behavior of a component
is very important for increasing the user’s
confidence before reuse the retrieved softwarecomponent with different qualities from thelibrary. Multimedia presentation will allow theusers to better understand the softwarecomponents.Existing techniques are mainly focusing onrepresentation issue of software components insoftware repositories. But they ignore thepresentation of the software component semantics.In this paper an approach for integratedclassification scheme with very effectivepresentation of reusable software components ispresented. A software tool is developed to classifymultimedia software components. Experimentallydemonstrated the software tool is highly efficient.The paper is organized as follows. Section 2illustrates survey of related research work. Theproposed classification technique to store andretrieve components is explained in section 3.Section 4 brings out the details of experimentationcarried out on the proposed classification method.The experimental results are demonstrated insection 5. Section 6 concludes the work andfollowed by its references.
(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2011114http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ISSN 1947-5500
II.
RELATED RESEARCHIn the recent past research on software reusehas been focusing on several areas: examiningprogramming language mechanisms to improvesoftware reusability; developing software processesand management strategies that support the reuse of software; also, strategies for setting up librariescontaining reusable code components, andclassification and retrieval techniques to help asoftware professional to select the component fromthe software library that is appropriate for his or herpurposes.Earlier the research on software reuse wasmuch focused on identifying reusable artifacts,storage and retrieval of software components. Ithad attracted more attention as it was essential forsoftware developers.
A.
Existing Software component Classificationand Retrieval Techniques
“A classified collection is not useful if it does
not provide the search-and-retrieval mechanism
and use it” [10]. A wide range of solutions to the
software component classification and retrievalwere proposed and implemented. At differenttimes, based on available software systems and alsoon
researchers’ criteria, software reuse
classification and retrieval approaches are observedwith minor variations.Ostertag et al. [24] reported three approachesfor classification. First is a free-text keywords nextone is that a faceted index and the last one issemantic-net based. Free text based approach useinformation retrieval and indexing technology toautomatically extract keywords from softwaredocumentation and index items with keywords. Thefree-text keyword approach is simple and anautomatic process. But this approach curtailssemantic information associated with keywords.Therefore it is not a precise approach. In facetedindex approach, experts extract keywords fromprogram descriptions and documentation. Theyarrange the keywords by facets into a classificationscheme, which is used as a standard descriptor forsoftware components. Mili et al [6] classifiessearch and retrieval approaches into four differenttypes:1) simple keyword and string match; 2) facetedclassification and retrieva curtailsl; 3) signaturematching; and 4) behavior matching. The last twoapproaches are cumbersome and inefficient.Mili et al [6] designed a software library inwhich software components are described in aformal specification: a specification is representedby a pair(S, R), where S is a set of specification,and R is a relation on S.The faceted classification scheme for softwarereuse proposed by Prieto-Diaz and Freeman [10]relies on facets which are extracted by experts todescribe features about components. Features serveas component descriptors, such as the componentfunctionality, how to run the component, andimplementation details. To determine similaritybetween query and software components, aweighted conceptual graph is used to measurecloseness by the conceptual distance among termsin a facet.
Girardi and Ibrahim’s [25] solution for
retrieving software artifacts is based on naturallanguage processing. Both user queries andsoftware component descriptions are expressed innatural language. Natural language processing atthe lexical, syntactic and semantic levels isperformed on software descriptions toautomatically extract both verbal and nominalphrases to create a frame-based indexing unit forsoftware components.
B.
Factors Affecting Software Reuse Practices
Even though a substantial number of components are becoming common withrepositories being developed, there are severalproblems with software reuse. First, a variety of components must be made available for reuse,which is maintained in a repository.Next, the classification factors used tocategorize the components play a vital role in thecomponent reuse. Each component is annotatedwith a brief description of its role. Classification of components is done based upon pre-definedclassifiers i.e. classification factors.Further, the component vendors are makinggreat strides in facilitating the distribution of components; no single vendor has emerged as theleader in providing a comprehensive solution to thesearch and retrieval problem. The size andorganization of the component repositories furtherexacerbates the problem.Finally, even if repositories are available, thereare no easy or widely accepted means for searching
for specific components to satisfy the users’
requirements.Software reuse deals with the ability to combineseparate independent software components to forma larger unit of software.Once the developer is satisfied with thecomponent he had retrieved from library, then it isadded to current project under development.Literature reveals many methods for developingmultimedia applications and processing multimediadata.Various uses for multimedia annotation havebeen identified for computer based training andnarration [5].The aim of the good component retrievalsystem is to locate either the component required or
(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2011115http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ISSN 1947-5500
the closest match in the shortest amount of timeusing a suitable query.
C.
Existing System Architecture
Existing techniques use the architecture shownin the Figure 1. In this architecture classificationand retrieval system relies upon single databaseinterface to manage both storage and retrievalprocess. If number of components in the databaseare more, then searching method will become moreinefficient.In existing architectures software reusablecomponents are directly stored in database. Thereis no special control and management of components. So retrieving of suitable componentsin a particular reuse scenario becomes tedious. Thisalso facilitates to perform different operations likefrequent component set and version control arebecomes easy.
Figure 1. Existing System Architecture
III.
PROPOSED SYSTEM
A.
Proposed Architecture
Existing software components in the repositorycan be directly classified in the classificationscheme into one among the above specifiedclassifications presented in the previous section andthen stored into a repository. Sometimes they needto be adapted according to the user requirements.As classification scheme inherently affect theclassification efficiency due to the techniques in theprevious section. New designs of softwarecomponents for reuse are also subjected toclassification scheme before storing them into arepository. User will retrieve his desiredcomponent with required attributes from therepository.The existing architecture is inefficient when thenumber of components in the database are more.To overcome this lacunae a modified architecture isproposed as shown in Figure 2. A dedicatedrepository is used to store and manage componentdetails with multimedia information.In the proposed architecture a separate reuserepository is responsible to control and manage allcomponents. It ensures the quality of componentsand availability of necessary documentation andhelps in retrieving suitable components withdetailed description. This amounts to centralizedproduction and management of software reusablecomponents.
Figure 2. Proposed System Architecture
B.
Proposed Classification Scheme
An Integrated Classification Scheme forReusable Software Components with MultimediaPresentations is proposed. In this scheme an audiopresentation is the combination of one or moreclassification techniques. It is likely to enhance theclassification efficiency. This will give rise to thedevelopment of a software tool to classify asoftware component and build a reuse repository.Integrated classification scheme whichcombines the faceted classification scheme toclassify components with the following attributevalues.
Operating system
Language, Function
user
Search Engine
New
ClassificationScheme
DataBase
Database Interface
Adapt
Existingcomponents
DataBase
Database Interfaceuser
SearchEngineReuserepositoryAdaptClassificationScheme
ExistingcomponentsNew
(IJCSIS) International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security,Vol. 9, No. 9, September 2011116http://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ISSN 1947-5500
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A Multilevel Representation of Repository for Software Reuse
Effective software Reuse will be due to classification schemes used on software components that are stored into and retrieve from a software repository. This work proposes a new methodology for efficient classification and retrieval of multimedia…
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