Article

Free access

Reuse contracts: managing the evolution of reusable assets

Authors:

Patrick Steyaert,

Theo D'HondtAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '96: Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications

Pages 268 - 285

https://doi.org/10.1145/236337.236363

Published: 01 October 1996 Publication History

Abstract

A critical concern in the reuse of software is the propagation of changes made to reusable artifacts. Without techniques to manage these changes, multiple versions of these artifacts will propagate through different systems and reusers will not be able to benefit from improvements to the original artifact. We propose to codify the management of change in a software system by means of reuse contracts that record the protocol between managers and users of a reusable asset. Just as real world contracts can be extended, amended and customised, reuse contracts are subject to parallel changes encoded by formal reuse operators: extension, refinement and concretisation. Reuse contracts and their operators serve as structured documentation and facilitate the propagation of changes to reusable assets by indicating how much work is needed to update previously built applications, where and how to test and how to adjust these applications.

References

[1]

Bracha. G. The Programming Language Jigsaw: Mixins, Modularity and Multiple Inheritance, PhD Thesis, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Utah, 1992.

Digital Library

[2]

Goldberg, A., Rubin, K. Succeeding with Objects: Decision Frameworks for Project Management, ISBN 0-201-62878-3, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995.

Digital Library

[3]

Helm, R., Holland, I., Gangopadhyay, D. "Contracts: Specifying Behavioral Compositions in Object-Oriented Systems", Proceedings of Joint ECOOP/OOPSLA '90 Conference, pp. 169-180, ACM Press, 1990.

Digital Library

[4]

Holland, I. The Design and Representation of Object-Oriented Components, PhD thesis, Northeastern University, 183 pages, 1992.

[5]

Johnson, R., Foote, B. "Designing Reusable Classes", Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, 1(2): 22-35, 1988.

[6]

Kiczales, G., Lamping, J. "Issues in the Design and Specification of Class Libraries", Proceedings of OOPSLA '92, Conference on Object-Oriented Programruing, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 435-451, ACM Press, 1992.

Digital Library

[7]

Lamping, J. "Typing the Specialisation Interface", Proceedings of OOPSLA '93, Conference on Object-Oriented Programruing, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 201-215, ACM Press, 1993.

Digital Library

[8]

Mens, K., Lucas, C., Steyaert, P. "ARC: an Algebra of Reuse Contracts", Tech-report available at: progftp.vub.ac.be/tech_report /1996/vub-prog-tr-96-03.ps.Z.

[9]

Opdyke, W., Johnson, R. "Refactoring: An Aid in Designing Application Frameworks and Evolving Object-Oriented Systems", Proceedings of Symposium on Object- Oriented Programming Emphasizing Practical Applications (SOOPPA), 1990.

[10]

Ossher, H., Harrison, W. "Combination of Inheritance Hierarchies", Proceedings of OOPSLA '92, Conference on Object- Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 25-40, ACM Press, 1992.

Digital Library

[11]

Ossher, H., Kaplan, M., Harrison, W., Katz, A., Kruskal, V. "Subject-Oriented Composition Rules", Proceedings of OOPSLA '95, Conference on Object- Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 235-250, ACM Press, }995.

Digital Library

[12]

Pancake, C. "Object Roundtable, The Promise and the Cost of Object Technology: A Five-Year Forecast", Communications of the A CM, October 1995, Vol 38(10), pp. 32-49, ACM Press, 1995.

Digital Library

[13]

Stata, R., Guttag, J. "Modular Reasoning in the Presence of Subclassing", Proceedings of OOPSLA '92, Conference on Object- Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications, pp. 200-214, ACM Press, 1995.

Digital Library

[14]

Van Limberghen, M., Mens, T. "Encapsulation and Composition as Orthogonal Operators on Mixins: A Solution to Multiple inheritance Problems", Object Oriented Systems Jo urn a l, Volume 3, Number 1, Chapmann&Hall, 1996.

[15]

Xerox Parc Aspect-Oriented Programming Project, "A position paper on Aspect- Oriented Programming", position paper for the A CM Workshop on Strategic Directions in Computing Research, Working Group Object-Oriented Programming, June 14-15 1996, MIT, USA

[16]

Yourdon, E. Object-Oriented System Design." An Integrated Approach, Yourdon Press Computing Systems, Prentice Hall, 1994.

Digital Library

Cited By

Kubeka SAde-Ibijola A(2021)Automatic Comprehension and Summarisation of Legal ContractsAdvances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal10.25046/aj0602036:2(19-28)Online publication date: Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.25046/aj060203
Mäkitalo NTaivalsaari AKiviluoto AMikkonen TCapilla R(2020)On opportunistic software reuseComputing10.1007/s00607-020-00833-6102:11(2385-2408)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00607-020-00833-6
Wang EDavis JZhao RNg HNiu XLuk WCheung PConstantinides G(2019)Deep Neural Network Approximation for Custom HardwareACM Computing Surveys10.1145/330955152:2(1-39)Online publication date: 30-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3309551
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Reuse contracts: managing the evolution of reusable assets
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques
      1. Reusability
    2. Software post-development issues
      1. Documentation
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Object oriented languages

Recommendations

Reuse contracts: managing the evolution of reusable assets

A critical concern in the reuse of software is the propagation of changes made to reusable artifacts. Without techniques to manage these changes, multiple versions of these artifacts will propagate through different systems and reusers will not be able ...
Viewpoint-centred reuse: bridging the gap between reusability and the needs of the reuser

The "Reuse without Reusers" SyndromeThe problems of low productivity, late delivery and poor software quality are, unfortunately, characteristic of the software industry (Horowitz and Munson 1989). Increasingly, software developers are looking towards ...
Managing Software Evolution through Reuse Contracts
CSMR '97: Proceedings of the 1st Euromicro Working Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR '97)

Assessing the impact of changes in one part of a software system on other parts remains one of the most compelling problems in software maintenance. This problem can be relieved by making implicit dependencies between different system parts explicit. We ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '96: Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN conference on Object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications

October 1996

458 pages

ISBN:089791788X

DOI:10.1145/236337

Chairmen:
Lougie Anderson
Sequent Computer Systems
,
James Coplien
Bell Labs.

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 31, Issue 10
Oct. 1996
443 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/236338
Chairmen:
Mary Loomis
Hewlett-Packard Labs.
,
Lougie Anderson
Sequent computer Systems
,
James Coplien
Bell Labs.
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1996 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 October 1996

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

OOPSLA96

Sponsor:

SIGPLAN

OOPSLA96: Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages and Applications

October 6 - 10, 1996

California, San Jose, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 268 of 1,244 submissions, 22%

Upcoming Conference

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

116
Total Citations
View Citations
890
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)60
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)10

Reflects downloads up to 09 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Kubeka SAde-Ibijola A(2021)Automatic Comprehension and Summarisation of Legal ContractsAdvances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal10.25046/aj0602036:2(19-28)Online publication date: Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.25046/aj060203
Mäkitalo NTaivalsaari AKiviluoto AMikkonen TCapilla R(2020)On opportunistic software reuseComputing10.1007/s00607-020-00833-6102:11(2385-2408)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00607-020-00833-6
Wang EDavis JZhao RNg HNiu XLuk WCheung PConstantinides G(2019)Deep Neural Network Approximation for Custom HardwareACM Computing Surveys10.1145/330955152:2(1-39)Online publication date: 30-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3309551
Debreceni CRáth IVarró DCarlos XMendialdua XTrujillo S(2016)Automated Model Merge by Design Space ExplorationProceedings of the 19th International Conference on Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 963310.1007/978-3-662-49665-7_7(104-121)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-662-49665-7_7
Meng SWang XZhang LMei HGlinz MMurphy GPezzè M(2012)A history-based matching approach to identification of framework evolutionProceedings of the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering10.5555/2337223.2337265(353-363)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2337223.2337265
Qi DRoychoudhury ALiang ZVaswani K(2012)DARWINACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/2211616.221162221:3(1-29)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2211616.2211622
Jennings PGhosh ABasu S(2012)A two-phase approximation for model checking probabilistic unbounded until properties of probabilistic systemsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/2211616.221162121:3(1-35)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2211616.2211621
Kästner CApel SThüm TSaake G(2012)Type checking annotation-based product linesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/2211616.221161721:3(1-39)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2211616.2211617
Meng SWang XZhang LMei H(2012)A history-based matching approach to identification of framework evolution2012 34th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE.2012.6227179(353-363)Online publication date: Jun-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2012.6227179
Tempero ECounsell SNoble J(2010)An empirical study of overriding in open source JavaProceedings of the Thirty-Third Australasian Conferenc on Computer Science - Volume 10210.5555/1862199.1862200(3-12)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1862199.1862200
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents