Component-Based Development Using UML

Luyin Zhao, Keng Siau
2002 Communications of the Association for Information Systems  
Component-based software development (CBD) is a potential breakthrough for software engineering. Unified Modeling Language (UML) can potentially facilitate CBD design and modeling. Although many research projects concentrate on the conceptual interrelation of UML and CBD, few incorporate actual component frameworks into the discussion, which is critical for real-world software system design and modeling. This paper reviews component-based development, including the use of UML for modeling CBD.
more » ... he paper then discusses the means by which UML extension mechanisms can be used to better support the popular component framework --CORBA. Two other important component frameworks, DCOM and Web Services, are also discussed. KEYWORDS: Component-based development, UML, CORBA, DCOM, Web services I. COMPONENT-BASED DEVELOPMENT Software engineering faces new challenges with the increasing complexity and length of the software development cycle. In the search for alternative methods to develop software more efficiently and with higher quality, component and component-based development (CBD) for software reuse is a key approach [Ben-Shaul et al., 1999; Brown and Wallnau, 1998; Norris et al., 2000] . Component-based development is a software development approach in which all aspects and phases of the development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment, and project management, are based on components [Herzum and Sims, 1999]. CBD evolved from the object-oriented methodology that encapsulates internal details of objects, and allows external applications to know and use the objects' interfaces. Over time, it proved difficult for objects developed with different languages, platforms, and running environments to work together (interoperability), and it was found that this difficulty impedes software reuse.
doi:10.17705/1cais.00912 fatcat:kgetwzbgtbf3xgdomv6jzxrtr4