A Framework for Evaluating Reusability of Core Assets using SPL and SOA

Abstract

Software reusability is one of the quality attributes that illustrate the importance of software to software developers and the return of investment for this software. Accordingly, it is very important taking into consideration all sub attributes which may affect the calculation of final reusability value, therefore it is good to provide a framework for evaluating reusability based on sub attributes that have direct contribution in reusability value. The research focus on designing framework for evaluating reusability in software product line (SPL) and service oriented architecture (SOA) approaches, where the two approaches are supporting the reusability concept. This is expected to be greatly reused when the two concepts are combined. All that mentioned above because the current quality models do not address the reusability of most important characteristic resulting from the integration of the two concepts, which are the core assets from software product line methodology and the web service from service oriented architecture methodology. The framework was designed by selected quality attributes from key feature of core assets and web service, also defined metrics for each attributes, and then applied the framework on the selected target system. Finally calculated the final result of reusability after applied the framework steps. The designed framework defined a systematic method for calculating the reusability of core assets as web service, where each attribute is calculated by reference to the related metric and artifact, which artifacts were defined previously before applying the framework. As in research case study, the case study was defined according to FODA, FAST and KOBRA methodology, and according to WSDL, XML and SOAP standard. Thus, all attributes was contributing in calculating the final value of reusability. At last, studied the final framework result to make an appropriate decision. The framework was applied to the Bank third party services which are credit recharge, electricity buying and water billing. The final result was obtained is 82.8% and is considered a high value compared with reusability values used in previous studies when applying the reuse calculation model for each methodology