CPSC 681 seminar, Spring 1997

Date:

Monday, March 31, 1997

Title:

Software Components

Speaker:

Dr. Johannes Sametinger, Johannes Keppler University, Linz, Austria

Summary:

Software components provide a vehicle for planned and systematic reuse. The software community does not yet agree on what a software component is exactly. Nowadays, the term component is used as a synonym for object most of the time, but it also stands for module or function. Recently the term `component-based' or `component-oriented software development' has become popular. In this context components are defined as `objects plus something'. What `something' is exactly, or has to be for effective software development, remains yet to be seen. However, systems and models are emerging to support that notion.

Systematic software reuse and the reuse of components influence almost the whole software engineering process (independent of what a component is). Software process models were developed to provide guidance in the creation of high-quality software systems by teams at predictable costs. The original models were based on the (mis)conception that systems are built from scratch according to stable requirements. With increasing reuse of software, new models for software engineering are necessary. They have to be based on systematic reuse of well-defined components.

About the speaker:

Johannes Sametinger is assistant professor at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. His research interests include software engineering, software documentation, software maintenance, software reuse, object-oriented programming, and programming environments. He was a visiting researcher at Texas A&M University and at Brown University for one year each in 1995 and 1996, respectively. He received a Ph.D. in 1991 in computer science from the Johannes Kepler University. Dr. Sametinger has also worked with Siemens in Germany on the development of compilers and programming environments.

Please note that everyone is invited and welcome to attend the seminars in this series