Software reuse: new approach in component identification

Given an informal requirement and a set of software components, we are concerned with how to identify the component in the set that can fill this requirement. In order for component reuse to be attractive, the effort to identify a component must be less than the anticipated effort to build it. An interactive approach to component identification that is supported by a knowledge base and an interrogatory user interface is described where the goal of this approach is ease of use. A formal representation to characterize component behavior at different abstraction levels is discussed. Partial matching of requirement to component and a means to make the requirement more and less general is reported. A distance value for the partial matchings is defined. A prototype system is used to illustrate the important features of the approach.