The Draco Approach to Constructing Software from Reusable Components

This paper discusses an approach called Draco to the construction of software systems from reusable software parts. In particular we are concerned with the reuse of analysis and design information in addition to programming language code. The goal of the work on Draco has been to increase the productivity of software specialists in the construction of similar systems. The particular approach we have taken is to organize reusable software components by problem area or domain. Statements of programs in these specialized domains are then optimized by source-to-source program transformations and refined into other domains. The problems of maintaining the representational consistency of the developing program and producing efficient practical programs are discussed. Some examples from a prototype system are also given.