Proposal of automatic methods for the reuse of software components in a library

Abstract

The increasing complexity of applications is constraining developers to use reusable components in component markets and mainly free software components. However, the selected components may partially satisfy the requirements of users. In this article, we propose an approach of optimization the selection of software components based on their quality. It consists of: (1) Selecting components that satisfy the customer's non-functional needs; (2) Calculate the quality score of each of these candidate components to select; (3) Select the best component meeting the customer's non-functional needs with linear programming by constraints. Our aim is to maximize this selection for considering financial cost of component and adaptation effort. Yet in the literature review, researchers are unanimous that software components reuse reduces the cost of development, maintenance time and also increases the quality of the software. However, the models already developed to evaluate the quality of the component do not simultaneously take into account financial cost and adaptation effort factors. So, in our research, we established a connection between the financial cost and the adaptation time of the selected component by a linear programming model with constraints. For our work's validation, we propose an algorithm to support the developed theory. User will then be able to choose the relevant software component for his system from the available components.