Facilitating component-based software engineering: COTS and open systems

The development of software systems from existing components continues to hold the attention of the software engineering community as it is considered to be an effective technical approach to reduce cost and development time, while increasing the quality of systems. A range of concepts and technologies have been promoted to contribute to component-based software engineering. Two recent technology trends have been the use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products and the creation of open systems. This paper relates them to the engineering of component-based software systems.