Software Thesaurus: a tool for reusing software objects

So far software reusability has not yet had practical application in the professional world. The reusability concept represents a direct link between productivity and software quality. In this paper a software tool is described, "Software Thesaurus" (ST), whose main purpose is to develop software, reusing objects produced previously in other software projects. This tool is defined by a new repository metamodel which supports the classification and retrieval of essential software objects defined by current object oriented methodologies, 4th generation languages, and GUI. This article presents both free text information and a software indexing system in order to classify all the objects necessary to develop a software application. The ST presents an original method to carry out typical software tasks i.e. analysis, design, and implementation through the combination of computer aid and reusability.