Software Engineering News

Software Engineering News

[Reuse News]

Software Engineering News Brief
Week Ending:  October 11, 1996.

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ADA AND REUSE NEWS BRIEFS COMBINING AND EXPANDING

The bi-weekly news services for Ada News and Reuse News have been 
combined and the news service's scope has been expanded.  Effective with 
this release, news briefs will provide information on the following 
Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) initiatives:  Ada, software 
reuse, I*CASE, DII, COE.  News summaries will be issued weekly.

SOURCE:  Ada Information Clearinghouse, Reuse Information Clearinghouse.  
info@sw-eng.falls-chruch.va.us

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MODELING LANGUAGE PROPOSED

Rational Software Corporation announced that Texas Instruments Software 
is collaborating with Rational to define the United Modeling Language 
(UML), a graphical object-modeling language developed to eliminate 
object-oriented method fragmentation.  Texas Instruments joins Microsoft, 
Hewlett-Packard, and Oracle in contributing to the UML, which will be 
submitted as a joint proposal on standard object models and notation to 
the Object Management Group (OMG).  Texas Instruments has been working 
with Rational to refine the UML's capabilities for supporting advanced 
repository architectures and component specification as well as modeling 
workflow.  The joint proposal will be presented to the OMG at the end of 
this year for formal standardization.  The OMG, of Framingham, MA, is a 
consortium of vendors that are jointly developing a set of standards for 
distributed object technologies.

For more information contact:

Rational Software Corporation
2800 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA  95051-0951
800/RAT-1212
product_info@rational.com

SOURCE:  Rational Online News:  10/7/96 Edition; 
rational_news-owner@rational.com.

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STUDY EVIDENCE SUPPORTS BENEFICIARY CLAIMS OF REUSE

The results of a recent study at the University of Maryland introduced 
much-needed empirical data to support the claims that software reuse can 
reduce defect density and rework, and increase productivity in an 
object-oriented framework.  Project leaders Victor Basili, Lionel Briand, 
and Walcelio Melo sought to produce hard evidence to support claims that 
reuse is an effective strategy for building high-quality software.  Data 
was collected for four months in late 1994 on the development of eight 
small (less than 15,000 SLOC) systems with equivalent functional 
requirements.  All eight projects were developed using the 
Waterfall-style Software Engineering Life Cycle Model, and OO design 
method, and the C++ programming language.  The study found significant 
benefits from reuse in terms of reduced defect density and rework as well 
as increased productivity.  According to the project leaders, the results 
can also help software organizations assess new reuse technologies 
against a quantitative and objective baseline of comparison.  For more 
information on the study and its results, the project leaders may be 
e-mailed at the following addresses:  Victor Basili, basili@cs.umd.edu; 
Lionel Briand, briand@iese.fhg.de; and Walcelio Melo, wmelo@crim.ca.

SOURCE:  Basili, V., Briand, L., and Melo, W., "How Reuse Influences 
Productivity," Communications of the ACM, October 1996:  39 (10),  pp. 
104-116.

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REUSABLE JAVA COMPONENTS AT THE CENTER OF INTERNET/DESKTOP INTEGRATION

Reusable Java components that will have the ability to communicate with 
one another is at the center of a team effort by IBM, Sun Microsystems, 
and Apple to integrate the Internet with the corporate desktop.  IBM 
recently released an OpenDoc component package that will allow developers 
to move Internet content, such as Java applets or ActiveX components, 
into desktop applications.  This intergration is the first step in an 
effort to combine OpenDoc technology with Sun's Java Beans initiative.  
OpenDoc is a standard architecture for plugging together software 
components to create distributed applications.  The Java Beans initiative 
is aimed at creating a set of component application programming 
interfaces for the Java platform that will allow developers to build 
reusable Java components that can communicate with one another.

SOURCE:  Gaudin, Susan, "Now Serving:  OpenDoc/Java Blend," 
ComputerWorld, 30 (39), p. 6.

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The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Software
Engineering Information Center (SEIC) "Software Engineering
News Brief" is a compilation of summaries from software
engineering-related articles in trade magazines, newsletters
and press releases. The DISA SEIC welcomes suggestions for,
and pointers to, software engineering-related articles.

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