Towards a software component ontology

Abstract

Research has shown that component-based software engineering leads to software that exhibits higher quality, shorter time-tomarket and therefore, lower development cost. However, the development of component-based systems has been widely plagued with problems surrounding the integration of third-party components. Currently, software developers are forced to rely on ambiguous definitions of a component's services. There is no easy to understand protocol for defining how third-party componentsand component compositions are described and integrated into systems. Most vendors specify their components' services in a proprietary or context dependant fashion. This makes it difficult to clearly understand a component's services, their use and their operational pre and post conditions. Software Engineering ontologies define common sharable software engineering knowledge. They explicitly define software engineering concepts, their relationships and their interactions. In this paper, we propose a Software Component Ontology that specifically defines a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization in the domain of software component engineering. We propose the use of our software component ontology as the basis for the development of future component compositions and component based applications.