Modelling formal integrated component retrieval

A fundamental problem associated with libraries of software components is that of retrieval: how to find specific components that can be used in the construction of a particular application. Approaches to this problem can be classified into three categories based upon the way components are represented: synthetic classification, structural matching and behavioral matching. The objective of the paper is to unify these existing approaches to the component retrieval problem into a formally specified framework, thereby enabling a rigorous description of integrated retrieval schemes.