A trustable brokerage solution for component and service markets

Abstract

As other engineering disciplines have often demonstrated, the costs and risks involved in developing new products are significantly reduced by the emergence of effective component markets. However, such markets have yet to appear in software engineering. In this paper we present an approach that addresses one of the main outstanding obstacles to software component markets - the overhead involved in establishing confidence in a component or service. The approach employs a new test definition metaphor which allows potential users to establish whether components do what they are supposed to do without giving them full access. We refer to this as the "black box brokerage" model for software markets which protects the interests of component providers as well as component users, and thus improves the economic motivation for reusing components. In the paper we also describe how a black box broker can be efficiently implemented, outline a new testing metaphor and explain its natural synergies with test-driven reuse. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.