Strong dependencies between software components

Abate, Pietro, Di Cosmo, Roberto, Boender, Jaap and Zacchiroli, Stefano (2009) Strong dependencies between software components. In: 2009 3rd International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2009). IEEE, 89 -99. ISBN 9781424448425. [Book Section] (doi:10.1109/ESEM.2009.5316017)

Abstract

Component-based systems often describe context requirements in terms of explicit inter-component dependencies. Studying large instances of such systems - such as free and open source software (FOSS) distributions - in terms of declared dependencies between packages is appealing. It is however also misleading when the language to express dependencies is as expressive as Boolean formulae, which is often the case. In such settings, a more appropriate notion of component dependency exists: strong dependency. This paper introduces such notion as a first step towards modeling semantic, rather then syntactic, inter-component relationships. Furthermore, a notion of component sensitivity is derived from strong dependencies, with applications to quality assurance and to the evaluation of upgrade risks. An empirical study of strong dependencies and sensitivity is presented, in the context of one of the largest, freely available, component-based system.

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: Online ISBN: 9781424448418. ISSN: 1938-6451. Proceedings of a meeting held 15-16 October 2009, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Previously published as MANCOOSI Technical Report 0002, June 2009.
Keywords (uncontrolled): Boolean formula, FOSS, component sensitivity, component-based software architecture, component-based system, context requirements, empirical study, free-and-open source software, quality assurance, risk evaluation, semantic modeling, software component strong-dependency, software package, software quality measures, syntactic intercomponent relationship, Boolean functions, object-oriented programming, quality assurance, risk analysis, software architecture, software metrics, software quality
Research Areas: A. > School of Science and Technology > Computer Science
A. > School of Science and Technology > Computer Science > Foundations of Computing group
A. > School of Science and Technology > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence group
Item ID: 9627
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Depositing User: Users 3197 not found.
Date Deposited: 06 Dec 2012 11:17
Last Modified: 13 Oct 2016 14:25
URI: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/id/eprint/9627

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