Feature-based approach to object-oriented engineering of applications for reuse

Object-oriented technology is gaining popularity among software engineers w ith the goal of building reusable and adaptable software. Unfortunately, ho wever, most methods introduced so far are not domain-oriented and do not ad dress the issue of reuse directly. For these methods, software reuse is not the primary goal; it is only a by-product. The feature-oriented reuse method, FORM, is extended in this paper for impr oving the object-oriented engineering of applications for reuse. FORM conce ntrates on analyzing and modeling commonalities and differences in the appl ications of a given domain in terms of capability, operating environment, d omain technology, and implementation technique features. These features are used to systematically derive objects that are tied to the features, and t o develop reusable and adaptable domain architectures. We found that FORM facilitates analysis of variability land commonality) of software before engineering and implementation start, and with this unders tanding, adaptability and reusability can be built into software. Feature m odeling has been found to be an effective method for identifying and modeli ng reusable objects. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.