Automatic Identification of Reusable Software Development Assets: Methodology and Tool

Software reuse is seen as one of the main alternatives to increase productivity in the development of new applications. The reuse of legacy assets plays a vital role anticipating the ROI (Return on Investment) on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and reuse enterprise programs. This paper presents a tool that implements an Automatic Identification of Software Components (AISC). AISC is an approach that brings to light what companies have already developed by applying reuse indicators with sophisticated mechanisms to identify artifacts that can be considered as reusable assets. Thus, they will have the potential of being reused in new applications, avoiding redevelopment of already existing features, enabling savings and increasing agility. Other tool features are the process of reusable assets analysis and harvesting. This is an interactive graphic visualization of the results and an export mechanism of the identified assets through a widely adopted Metadata Representation Model.