Describing Specifications and Architectural Requirements of COTS Components

L. Iribarne, J.M. Troya and A. Vallecillo.

Kung-Kiu Lau eds.

The Book Series on Component-based Software Development, World Scientific.

Abstract

Currently there is an increasing interest in the use of COTS components for building software applications. One of the key aspects in the construction of COTS-based applications is the definition of software architecture prototypes from visual notations and reusable components (commercial components). These specifications must comply with some related aspects of COTS components, such as the quality of service (QoS), or the non-functional and functional information of the component. However, the possible benefits of COTS software architecture development, such as low cost, low risk, and high quality, cannot be satisfactorily achieved due to inadequate and/or incomplete proposals for commercial component, specification and architecture definition. This paper discusses an approach for describing specifications and architectural requirements of COTS components. It uses an extended UML-RT notation by means of notes, tagged values and restrictions to accommodate component information. A small GIS system example of a COTS-based software application is also used to illustrate the approach.

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