SOFTWARE REUSE - ISSUES AND AN EXAMPLE

Reusability is a general principle that is instrumental in avoiding du plication and capturing commonality in inherently similar tasks. It si mplifies and unifies classes of phenomena and is the basis for economi c justification for developing reusable software products that make co mputers and programmers more productive. This paper provides an overvi ew of some of the major issues in reuse combined with practical experi ence based on a case study of reuse in the telecommunications industry : a project of moderate complexity on signaling link provisioning that was carried out at AT&T Bell Labs. The project incorporates reuse int o the prototyping paradigm. The benefits of reuse are quantified, and their effect on productivity is shown. In addition, a simple and effec tive intelligent reuse support system, based on concepts of rule based expert systems and relational databases, is detailed for use as a met a-language interface for automatic code (skeleton) generation. The cas e illustrates many significant aspects associated with the integration of reuse in information systems development.