Component-Based Software Engineering

Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is now the way to produce software fast, with less effort, of high quality--not just the first time a product is released but for its entire life. More and more it is being applied to industrial strength and mission-critical software. It is becoming the indispensable element in the mainstream of the software world....The book you are now holding is the first handbook-like volume to present this state of the art.

--Ivar Jacobson, from the Foreword

Building large-scale and complex software systems from available parts is an emerging strategy in industry. Its goals, among others, are to consistently increase return on investment and time to market, while assuring higher quality and reliability than can be achieved through current software development. Written by leading experts from around the world, this book presents the latest concepts and practices in CBSE. While detailing both the advantages and the limitations of CBSE, the book's underlying aim is to define this new field, to frame the discussion, and to ensure that managers and engineers have the background they need to ask good questions and make informed decisions about components.

Beginning with some carefully wrought definitions, the book moves on to cover nearly every aspect of component engineering--from software engineering practices to the design of software component infrastructures, technologies, and systems. The book includes specific examples of CBSE successes and failures, and provides a balanced overview of the complexities of the component-based software life cycle.

This timely and comprehensive volume:

• Explains precisely what CBSE is and why it is as important to software development as the assembly line was to the industrial revolution
• Shows how to avoid common mistakes while succeeding with difficult and important cultural, budgetary, and process issues
• Presents new CBSE procedures to ensure good software development practices
• Describes a layered method for designing and building complex distributed component systems using the Unified Modeling Language
• Covers common component technologies, such as CORBA CCM, Transactional COM+, EJB, and much more
• Presents the legal and regulatory challenges of marketing and purchasing components

Component-Based Software Engineering is the most definitive collection of expertise ever assembled on this growing technology, and a book that must be read and referred to by anyone working in CBSE or considering doing so. To provide updates to this book, and to stimulate further discussion of the issues it covers, the editors maintain a Web site dedicated to CBSE (http://www.cbseng.com).