A metadata model for reusable software components on the Internet

Abstract

The software development trend by selecting and assembling commercial off-the shelf (COTS) components is widely accepted. This approach implies that the selected components must not only match application requirements but also work well with each other. These component selection and integration issues are not much addressed in research and commercial world as there is no standardized way to specify component descriptions that will be used for selection and integration of components. This research proposes a metadata model for reusable software components that can be used by component vendors to describe components to be published and by system integrators to specify search criteria for required components. A prototype of the model has been devleoped to employ the proposed metadata description which comprises integration-related attributes, all of which can be used to determine the degree of compatibility between integrated components. With this prototype, specifications of required components are compared with specifications of published components, and the results are the candidate ensembles that match requirement specifications. These ensembles are then ranked by compatibility scores according to predefined integration rules. System integrators can make further decision on the ensemble that best suits their applications based on the results from the prototype. It is expected that this metadata model and its integration approach can be a starting point for a more standardized component specification and deployment in the future.