Request for reuse tool info

Request for reuse tool info

[Bucky Ransdell]

I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
tools targeted specifically at reuse and software engineering environments
that support it as part of the larger development process.  The key feature
for my purposes is a repository for software assets supporting classification
schemes for archiving, organizing, and retrieving reusable components.

I'd very much appreciate getting any information you have on this subject,
including summaries of capabilities, product and company names and addresses,
personal opinions, and pricing information.  Please e-mail this information
to me at

wgr@rti.rti.org

I will gladly post a summary of the collected information if it would be
of interest.

If this topic has already been discussed in this newsgroup, maybe someone
can send me a summary of what was learned.  I'd also like to know if there's
another newsgroup that is a more appropriate forum for this request.

Thanks a lot.

Bucky Ransdell

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[Martin Janzen]

In article <1992Dec1.152321.29538@rti.rti.org>, wgr@rti.org (Bucky Ransdell) wr
ites:
>I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
>tools targeted specifically at reuse and software engineering environments
>that support it as part of the larger development process.  The key feature
>for my purposes is a repository for software assets supporting classification
>schemes for archiving, organizing, and retrieving reusable components.

One interesting approach would be to simply use a very fast text retriever.
I saw a demonstration recently of something called "Pat", from Open Text
Corporation (519-571-7111).  It accepts a large database of text in any
format ("no exceptions", they say), creates a huge, complex index, and
then allows you to retrieve all occurrences of _any_ string in the text --
from a long string to a single character -- within about two seconds; very
impressive!  It's capable of dealing with structured text (such as code?),
so that when a search results in a "hit", you should be able to have it
display the containing function, source file, or other appropriate
structure.  Since it was developed for use with the (580MB) Oxford English
Dictionary, it's able to deal with _huge_ amounts of text.  But as you can
imagine, updates to the index structure are quite slow, so it's best suited
to large volumes of seldom-modified text.  A code repository sounds like
a good application for this thing.

I think that a full-text retrieval system would have a number of advantages.
It should eliminate much of the need for elaborate classification schemes,
keyword indexes, and so on.  It would enable programmers to search for
reusable components using "keys" that were not contemplated by the code
librarian who set up the repository.  Also, there would be no danger of
having the code and the classification and indexing information grow "out
of sync" with each other, since the index can be regenerated as often as
needed, directly from the code.

The usual caveats:  This is based on a two-hour demonstration; I haven't
used "Pat" myself, much less built code repositories with it.  But the
remarkable speed of this thing offers some interesting new possibilities...

-- 
Martin Janzen                     janzen@mprgate.mpr.ca (134.87.131.13)
MPR Teltech Ltd.                  Phone: (604) 293-5309
8999 Nelson Way                   Fax: (604) 293-6100
Burnaby, BC, CANADA  V5A 4B5

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[Gregory Aharonian]

>I am investigating tools supporting software reuse. I'm interested in both
>....
   This question reveals another way how the DoD is ignoring the free markets.
In this case, the DoD through STARS and other efforts, is wasting a lot of
money developing reuse retrieval tools.  However, there are commercial
solutions available now, that don't require any government funding.
   My favorite approach, is to use any of the commercial relational databases
and develop a schema for describing a reusable component (an easy task,
already done).  Next I would load the database with all of the requisite
information.  I would then use one of the natural language interfaces
(Natural Language in Berkeley has a great system) to interface with the
relational database.  Then I could enter "Retrieve all radar signal
processing software in Ada that is not classifed and is less than 100
lines of code" (which these natural language systems can handle), and
out comes my response.  For some time, I have been trying to raise 
funding in the real world to implement this approach for my database of
information on 20,000+ government and university programs in source code
form, since it would make a great product  (and illustrate how irrelevant
most government reuse are).
   The point is is that the DoD is funding the development of reuse
retrieval tools that can quickly be put together with technology already
available in the commercial marketplace.  But as usual, the DoD would
rather fund competing development efforts, to create more turf to preserve.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization
-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!spool.mu.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net]

In article <1992Dec1.152321.29538@rti.rti.org>, wgr@rti.org (Bucky Ransdell) wr
ites:
> I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
> tools targeted specifically at reuse and software engineering environments
> that support it as part of the larger development process.  The key feature
> for my purposes is a repository for software assets supporting classification
> schemes for archiving, organizing, and retrieving reusable components.
> 
> I'd very much appreciate getting any information you have on this subject,
> including summaries of capabilities, product and company names and addresses,
> personal opinions, and pricing information.  Please e-mail this information
> to me at
> 
> wgr@rti.rti.org
> 
> I will gladly post a summary of the collected information if it would be
> of interest.
> 
> If this topic has already been discussed in this newsgroup, maybe someone
> can send me a summary of what was learned.  I'd also like to know if there's
> another newsgroup that is a more appropriate forum for this request.
> 
> Thanks a lot.
> 
> Bucky Ransdell

The object oriented programming group of the univ. of Geneva (headed by prof.
Tsichritzis) is working on just that topic. I read their latest tech report
entitled "object frameworks" which is full of articles on reuse methodologies,
tools and experiences. They have built their own environment for OO programming
and component-based software construction.

Worth reading !

Address:
Centre Universitaire d'Informatique
Uni Dufour
24, rue General Dufour
Ch-1211 Geneva 4
Switzerland

Phone: +41 22 705 71 11
Fax: +41 22 320 29 27


I hope this will help.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Philippe Dugerdil
DATASPHERE S.A.
Geneva/Switzerland

email: dugerdil@uni2a.unige.ch
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[think.com!yale.edu!ira.uka.de!gate.fzi.de!fweber]

In article <1992Dec1.192517.16082@mprgate.mpr.ca>, janzen@lichen.mpr.ca (Martin
 Janzen) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec1.152321.29538@rti.rti.org>, wgr@rti.org (Bucky Ransdell)
 writes:
|> >I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
...
|> 
|> One interesting approach would be to simply use a very fast text retriever.
|> I saw a demonstration recently of something called "Pat", from Open Text
...
|> 
|> I think that a full-text retrieval system would have a number of advantages.
|> It should eliminate much of the need for elaborate classification schemes,
...

Such an approach would IMHO at least require a specific
thesaurus which relates similar technical notions of the application
domains of the components contained in the database. Furthermore, you
have to ensure certain documentation standards for the components. 
Otherwise important informations for the components will be missing.
For example, for each component the resource requirements (time,
storage) have to be specified.

Another problem is the different view of a producer and the consumer
of reusable software. A producer may specify her component performs
searching in linear time. The consumer on the other hand specifies
that he needs a component which is able to search fast. The
specification what kind of software properties fulfil certain
requirements goes beyond traditional thesarus techniques. In this
situation a taxonomy is needed, which describes relations between
properties and requirements.

Probably, we have to distinguish between selecting reusable software
from an open and heterogenous market and selecting specific components
which have to meet very specific requirements in terms of efficiency
and interoperability with other parts of an already existing system.
It is the nature of a market that we cannot ensure certain
documentation standards or classification according a fixed scheme.
In this sitatuation I could imagine that text retrieval is an
interesting approach. 

However, our experience shows that in the second
situation approaches with rigorous classification schemes are
necessary. Typically the second situation occurs when retrieval is
done in an application specific catalogue of components.
This already implies that the specification of the components is
done in uniform notions of the application domain.
The components have to be assembled to form systems. Therefore,
they have to be interoperable. Hence, they all have to follow certain design
principles (e.g. are part of one class hierarchy) and documentation
standards. The retrieval tool for such a catalogue has to support
all these agreements and standards of the catalogue. This naturally
leads to classification schemes for reuasble software.

-- Franz Weber

|> 
|> The usual caveats:  This is based on a two-hour demonstration; I haven't
|> used "Pat" myself, much less built code repositories with it.  But the
|> remarkable speed of this thing offers some interesting new possibilities...
|> 
|> -- 
|> Martin Janzen                     janzen@mprgate.mpr.ca (134.87.131.13)
|> MPR Teltech Ltd.                  Phone: (604) 293-5309
|> 8999 Nelson Way                   Fax: (604) 293-6100
|> Burnaby, BC, CANADA  V5A 4B5

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!cs.uiuc.edu!joh]

In my opinion, the need for library tools is grossly overstated.  The
hard part is not the library tools, it is the library.  The fact that
everybody wants library tools is a symptom of the computer science
disease of trying to cure every problem with a new tool.

I agree with Greg Aharonian that you can probably just use any old
searching tool, like a relational database or a text retrieval tool,
if you had a decent database to search.  Greg's got a database, so
why doesn't someone pay him to put it into a form that can be searched
properly?  Of course, if someone does, they'll probably find out that
the database is missing some important information.  So, pay Greg to
put that information in.  It should only take an iteration or two to
get it right, it will take a lot less effort than writing some big
program, and it is likely to work, while I don't believe that a new
tool will solve any real problems.

The database is a much bigger problem than the tool.  New software is
continually coming out, and someone needs to try it and find out what
it does.  There should be testing labs, people worrying about how to
classify software, etc.  It is obvious (to me, at least) that it is
better to have a single (or a small number of) companies do this and
sell the results than to have everybody duplicate it on their own.  
Somebody like Greg should sell rights to his database, and should use
that income to improve it.

I don't know Greg, though I have seen his name on papers and know a
little about what he is doing.  If I've got him figured out right then
he is trying to get into this business.  If every company that is 
interested in reuse would just sign a contract with him to provide a
database then I bet we would hear a lot less complaining about not being
able to find reusable software.  Once there was a good database, I bet
it would be a lot easier to make tools, too. 

Of course, organizing reusable software is not easy, especially when
you think of it as just a bunch of parts.  That is the wrong way to
think about it, naturally.  The right way to think about it is as
frameworks.  If you think I wrong, please get my paper by anonymous
ftp from st.cs.uiuc.edu in /pub/papers/reusable-oo-design.ps and tell
me what is wrong with it.  (Or use send e-mail to the archive server
archive-server@st.cs.uiuc.edu and say "send papers/reusable-oo-design.ps").

Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!csus.edu!netcom.com]

I would caution that just adding a retrieval tool may not help.  I
have seen a real reuse success situation that happened accidentally. I
saw it later deteriorate when the key thing making it work (a real
living breathing technical librarian who used exhaustive searches
(like grep), simple keyword searches, and a thesaurus of common
synonyms) was replaced with "direct hands on access" by the
programmers using tools.  (I've discussed the details of this case
here in the past--I won't go into it again unless there is interest).

The motivations of the librarian and the programmer are different.
The Librarian feels rewarded when they find something hidden deep in
the library and the patron thanks the librarian.  The programmer may
not share that interest in exploring the library--in fact they may
prefer to write another program from scratch rather than look for one
in the library.  To see if this is true in your organization see how
many programmers consult texts like Collected Algorithms of the ACM in
the library before writing any algorithm.  Do those programmers prefer
to call a librarian (or maybe another peer programmer who might have
needed something similar) or do they prefer to check the card
catalogs, periodical indexes, and browse the stacks?  Past human
behavior is the best predictor of future behavior we have.

I've seen many WELL FUNDED intentional efforts to create such re-use
programs at big companies like HP.  These have never been as
successful as the accidental case I mentioned above.  But these
intentional cases almost always focus on TOOLS, and CATEGORIZATION
schemes. They universally ignore PSYCHOLOGICAL, ORGANIZATIONAL and
ECONOMIC behavior of individuals and groups involved. They never added
a technical librarian to the project as a catalyst, because their
organizations can only hire programmers and write tools. When you have
a hammer every problem looks like a nail.  That limits the reliability
of the structures you can build.

By failing to pay attention to this issue, these efforts almost always
only see the Hawthorne effect--an initial success when the project is
new, and then a decline.  Also, in small pilot groups the
psychological, sociological and economic are known to all participants
and get filtered into the solution in an informal way.  But they ARE
filtered in.  Then when mass deployment occurs there is no one who has
worked out these things for all the new people. The absence of a
formal addressing of these issues means they aren't addressed at all
in the larger case, and this leads to ultimate failure.

Programmers DO reuse a lot of code--namely their own past code. But
when you start to talk about re-using other people's code you need to
consider issues such as whether the new activities are personally
rewarding or whether they will be experienced as de-skilling.  And
since you are talking about multiple people here you need to consider
lessons learned from groupware economics. Individual benefits have to
exceed costs for success--it isn't sufficient that the group benefits
exceed the costs.  

REUSE can be successful, but only if you consider these other aspects.
We would advise potential clients contemplating such a system to look
at these issues and ensure that they are dealt with as well as dealing
with the technical aspects of tools and categories.

-- 

Scott L. McGregor		mcgregor@netcom.com
President			tel: 408-985-1824
Prescient Software, Inc.	fax: 408-985-1936
3494 Yuba Avenue
San Jose, CA 95117-2967

Prescient Software sells Merge Ahead, the tool for Merging Text or Code and
offers consulting  & training in project management and design for usability.

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[mcsun!uknet!yorkohm!minster!mjl-b]

In article <ByMu6L.4LJ@cs.uiuc.edu> johnson@cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph Johnson) writes:
>In my opinion, the need for library tools is grossly overstated.  The
>hard part is not the library tools, it is the library.  The fact that
>everybody wants library tools is a symptom of the computer science
>disease of trying to cure every problem with a new tool.

I think that the hard part is the taxonomy of software. If you can get the
right words to describe your components, you've half solved the problem. The
rest is "just" implementation.

>Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Mat

| Mathew Lodge                      | "I don't care how many times they go    |
| mjl-b@minster.york.ac.uk          |  up-tiddly-up-up. They're still gits."  |
| Langwith College, Uni of York, UK |  -- Blackadder Goes Forth               |

Request for reuse tool info

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!overload.lbl.gov!agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio]

-- Bucky Ransdell posted the following recently; reply at end

From: wgr@rti.org (Bucky Ransdell)
Subject: Request for reuse tool info
Message-ID: <1992Dec1.152321.29538@rti.rti.org>
Sender: wgr@rti.rti.org
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Date: Tue, 1 Dec 92 15:23:21 GMT

I am investigating tools supporting software reuse.  I'm interested in both
tools targeted specifically at reuse and software engineering environments
that support it as part of the larger development process.  The key feature
for my purposes is a repository for software assets supporting classification
schemes for archiving, organizing, and retrieving reusable components.

I'd very much appreciate getting any information you have on this subject,
including summaries of capabilities, product and company names and addresses,
personal opinions, and pricing information.  Please e-mail this information
to me at

wgr@rti.rti.org

I will gladly post a summary of the collected information if it would be
of interest.

If this topic has already been discussed in this newsgroup, maybe someone
can send me a summary of what was learned.  I'd also like to know if there's
another newsgroup that is a more appropriate forum for this request.

Thanks a lot.

Bucky Ransdell

-------------------------------

The STARS Program (under DARPA) has been developing and integrating reuse
tools into software engineering environments so as to support a
process-driven, domain-specific reuse based approach to the development of
software intensive systems.

At least as important than tools, STARS has also defined a conceptual
framework for reuse processes, defined several processes that facilitate
domain specific reuse, e.g., domain analysis, reusable asset evaluation, reuse
spiral life cycle process, etc, and  worked to describe the
inter-relationships between doamin engineering and application engineering
from a reuse context.

The three STARS prime contractors are integrating reuse library tools into
development environments.
  * Boeing is providing a reuse library capability as an extension
    of the DEC Cohesion product, which provides an object oriented framework.
    This tightly integrated reuse library mechanism inherits the
    framework's multi-user client/server model and user interface and 
    provides flexible asset classification and retrieval capabilities.
  * IBM is integrating a commercial library product, Inquisix, developed by
    SPS, into its environment.  This product
    supports multiple classification and indexing schemes.
  * Paramax has developed the knowledge-based Reuse Library Framework (RLF)
    capability, which supports capture of a domain model and reusable assets
    in a semantic net and associated rule base.

Through our technology transition program, these tools and the conceptual
underpinnings are being evaluated and refined by volunteer contributors from
the DoD contractor community, industry, and academia.

All of these library tools are tailorable to satisfy organizational and/or
domain needs.  They also allow integration of other tools to enable additional
processing over that supported by the library tools. e.g., display of design
diagrams by the generating tool, extraction of components for test, exchange
etc.

These tools and other STARS products, as well as commercially related
activities are being demonstrated at the STARS'92 Conference December 8-10,
1992 at the Omni-Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC.  The conference program has
been previously posted; included in the Reuse track are presentations on the
STARS Reuse program, the conceptual framework mentioned above, software
architectures and other reuse work in the DoD.

Further information about STARS reuse activities (conceptual basis and
tooling) can be obtained from:

Teri Payton
  STARS reuse system architect
  Internet:  payton@stars.ballston.paramax.com
  Telephone: 703-351-5308 
  
Marlene Hazle
   Internet:  HAZLE@MITRE.ORG 
   Telephone: 617 271 2192
  
-----------------------------------

John Foreman
STARS Program Manager
jtf@dc.sei.cmu.edu



John Foreman                       jtf@sei.cmu.edu
Software Engineering Institute     (412) 268-6417
Pittsburg, pa

Re: Request for reuse tool info

[cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!net]

In article <SRCTRAN.92Dec1231041@world.std.com>, srctran@world.std.com (Gregory
 Aharonian) writes:
|> >I am investigating tools supporting software reuse. I'm interested in both
|> >....
|>    This question reveals another way how the DoD is ignoring the free market
s.
|> In this case, the DoD through STARS and other efforts, is wasting a lot of
|> money developing reuse retrieval tools.  However, there are commercial
|> solutions available now, that don't require any government funding.
|>    My favorite approach, is to use any of the commercial relational database
s

I agree, if we are going to reuse, why not reuse what's already out
there, like Aharonian suggests, a commercial database product.  Another
possibility would be one of the commercially available library
information systems.  Are the types of queries that software developers
would make really any different than the types of queries one would
make in browsing through a library system looking for a book or article?
No.  Just how much further would STARS be if the time was spent building
the information base needed for software developers and place it in
an existing library system with all its cross referencing, keyword,
and general access capabilities?
-- 
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