A Reuse Definition, Assessment, and Analysis Framework for UML

Abstract

Despite the popularity of component-based models, languages, and tools, there is an absence of reusability assessment/analyses throughout the design and development process. Software engineers must be allowed to precisely measure the potential and actual reuse of software artifacts to achieve domain-specific reuse for an organization's current and future products. Towards this goal, our previous work provided a formal framework for reusability assessment of components and classes via metrics and refactoring guidelines/algorithms, at the development stage. This paper significantly extends that work by incorporating reuse definition, assessment, and analysis into UML at the design stage, prior to the existence of code. Specifically, we expand our reuse model/framework to include dependency tracking in use case and class diagrams in support of reusability analysis and refactoring for UML. We discuss the integration of these extensions into the UML tool Together Control Center, to support reusability measurement from design to development.

Modeling Methodology for Component Reuse and System Integration for Hurricane Loss Projection Application

“…The reuse potential of class depends on the extent to which class to class relationship or coupling is defined [7,8]. Classes are related to other classes if they expect to use and reuse other classes in present implementations and future applications [5]. The class to class relationship is very useful to plug in a component from one application to another.…”

“…Major reuse scenarios can be modeled by three generalization relationships supported by Use Case Diagrams [5] viz. <extend>, <include> and <inheritance>.…”