Feature‐based approach to object‐oriented engineering of applications for reuse

Abstract

Object-oriented technology is gaining popularity among software engineers with the goal of building reusable and adaptable software. Unfortunately, however, most methods introduced so far are not domain-oriented and do not address the issue of reuse directly. For these methods, software reuse is not the primary goal; it is only a by-product. The feature-oriented reuse method, FORM, is extended in this paper for improving the object-oriented engineering of applications for reuse. FORM concentrates on analyzing and modeling commonalities and differences in the applications of a given domain in terms of capability, operating environment, domain technology, and implementation technique features. These features are used to systematically derive objects that are tied to the features, and to develop reusable and adaptable domain architectures. We found that FORM facilitates analysis of variability (and commonality) of software before engineering and implementation start, and with this understanding, adaptability and reusability can be built into software. Feature modeling has been found to be an effective method for identifying and modeling reusable objects. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.