A DOMAIN-INDEPENDENT SOFTWARE REUSE FRAMEWORK BASED ON A HIERARCHICALTHESAURUS

Software reuse is an effective way to improve software productivity an d quality. Software libraries are getting bigger, while most of them, such as those for object-oriented languages, use Simple but somewhat i neffective classification methods. These libraries typically provide s earch aids for novices, but not for experts. They are not flexible eno ugh to adequately serve users with different abilities. In this paper, a Software Reuse Framework (SRF) for overcoming these drawbacks is pr oposed. Based on a built-in hierarchical thesaurus, the classification process can be made semiautomatic. SRF is a domain-independent framew ork that can be adapted to various libraries. SRF also provides four s earch levels to serve users with different skill levels. Two sample SR F systems are implemented, one for Smalltalk-80 and the other for MFC 4.0 (Microsoft(R) Foundation Class) libraries. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.