Type of Publication: Article in Collected Edition

Decision Support for Off-The-Shelf Software Components in Web Development

Author(s):

Schwittek, Widura; Eicker, Stefan

Editor:

Michael Grossniklaus, Manuel Wimmer

Title of Anthology:

Current Trends in Web Engineering

pages:

238-243

Publisher:

Springer

Location(s):

Berlin, Heidelberg

Publication Date:

2012

ISBN:

978-3-642-35622-3

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-35623-0_26

Citation:

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Abstract

Reusing off-the-shelf (OTS) components (including commercial and open source software) has become a key success factor in software development projects leading to reduced costs, faster time-to-market and better software quality. This especially holds true in the field of web engineering, where software engineers are faced with a steady proliferation of new technologies and standards. But there are upfront and ongoing efforts and risks attached to the adoption of OTS components which makes decision-making very difficult. Such difficulties are for example a large and intransparent market, incompatibilities between components and architectural mismatches. In this paper, a plan towards a novel platform concept is proposed that can improve the situation for software engineers coping with the adoption of OTS components during webbased systems development.

One key contribution is an empirically derived ontology to describe software artifacts on a feature level allowing a better description and identification of OTS components in the domain of web development. Another key contribution is a concept for a lean experience sharing mechanism. The goal of both contributions is to improve OTS component decision-making.

The concept will be implemented as a platform prepopulated with OTS components from the domain of Java web development. A cross-case study is planned to evaluate the concept.