Designing reusable object-oriented architectures - challenges, methods & tools

Summary form only given, as follows. More and more software developers are recognizing the need for solutions that make it possible to share code between different applications in the same domain. Reusing code increases not only the productivity of the developers but also the reliability and maintainability of the software products. Many software companies have ended up with a repository of enterprise components modelling the core business of the company, or with a product-line architecture that captures the common aspects of a family of software products. In both cases, object-orientation (OO) offers a technology that enables these solutions. The workshop studies the problems in designing reuse-oriented architectures (ROA) within the OO paradigm and the OO techniques that support this. The design of such systems is much harder than the design of individual applications, because ROAs need to be valid for unforeseen applications. Instead of a closed world of application concepts, the designer must analyze the variable aspects of a domain. The workshop covers a wide range of topics related to the development of ROAs, including: Design methods for OO product-lines/frameworks; Case studies of existing ROAs; Patterns and architectural styles supporting ROAs; Component-based ROAs; Evaluation of ROAs; Tools supporting the creation and reuse of product-line platforms and frameworks; Documentation of product-line platforms and frameworks; Practical experiences with reuse in OO; and Re-engineering legacy systems into ROAs.