Software representation and composition techniques

The field of software development has undergone some of its most profound changes in the last ten years. Much of this change has been in response to ever increasing demands on software systems in terms of their complexity, reliability, and resiliency. Symptomatic of such rapid evolution is the proliferation of methods and techniques intended to solve "the" software problem. However, real-world software design problems often exhibit characteristics that make them unique. This forces the software engineer to seek alternative ways of composing and documenting a design. This paper describes a sampling of the alternatives and directs the reader to sources of more detailed information regarding their use as well as a larger survey of this rapidly changing field.