Supporting evolution in component-based development using component libraries

Component-based software development (CBSD) is a very promising software engineering technique for improving reuse and maintenance. Nevertheless, there are still some difficulties in practice when reusing, maintaining and evolving components and/or component-based (CB) applications. We review the concepts of version and configuration management and apply them in the context of CBSD. The use of multi-dimensional component libraries, which are software libraries that classify components with respect to different views, is proposed. Next to the libraries, we propose a configuration model for CB applications based on components and connectors. In this way, the libraries not only support component storage and retrieval but also version and configuration management of components and CB applications. Furthermore, it is possible to introduce metrics in the configuration model and libraries allowing us to predict the impact of changes in CB systems.