Software reuse has been recognized as important. According to our research, when a software product is reused, products correlated to the reused one may be reusable. This paper proposes a model for software products and a technique to retrieve correlated products. The paper also presents equations to evaluate correlation values, which is guidance for selecting reusable correlated products. Since correlated products can be identified by tracing product relationships, the proposed model manages both products and relationships.

This paper proposes a coordinator for workflow management systems (WFMSs). It is a basic module for developing WFMSs. It is also a coordinator to coordinate multiple WFMSs. The coordinator provides functions to facilitate executing workflows and to ensure secure access of workflow information. Facilitating workflow execution is well-known, but ensuring secure access of workflow information is identified as important only recently. Although many models ensure secure workflow information access, they fail to offer the features we need. We thus developed a new model for the control. This paper presents the coordinator its access control model.

This paper presents a model called PECM (process environment coordination model) to coordinate heterogeneous PSEEs. A PSEE coordinated by PECM is associated with a standard-interfaced PECM coordinator, which provides primitive coordination functions. PECM uses shared product status to coordinate PSEEs. It is expected to offer several features. First, multiple PSEEs can be used in the same project. Second, PECM manages products and product relationships across PSEEs. Third, PECM coordinator is standard- interfaced, which is easy to use.

Process-centered software engineering environments (PSEEs) facilitate controlling software processes. Many issues related to PSEEs such as process evolution support have been addressed. We identify an unsolved issue, which is preventing information leakage when the process is being enacted. We developed a model called PsACL for the prevention. This paper proposes PsACL, which offers the following features: (a) controlling both read and write access of software products, (b) preventing indirect information leakage, (c) managing role associations, (d) managing role hierarchies, (e) enforcing static and simple dynamic separation-of-duty constraints, (f) allowing declassification of products, and (g) allowing access control information exchange among software processes.

This paper proposes a model for access control within object-oriented systems. The model is based on RBAC (role-based access control) and is called DRBAC (dynamic RBAC). Although RBAC is powerful in access control, the original design of RBAC required that user-role assignments and role-permission assignments should be handled statically (i.e., the assignments should be handled by human beings). Nevertheless, the following dynamic features are necessary in access control within a software system: (a) managing dynamic role switching, (b) avoiding Trojan horses, (c) managing role associations, and (d) handling dynamic role creation and deletion. DRBAC offers the dynamic features. This paper proposes DRBAC.

Process-centered software engineering environments (PSEEs) facilitate controlling complicated software processes. Traditional PSEEs are generally centrally controlled, which may result in the following drawbacks: (1) the server may become a bottleneck and (2) when the server is down, processes need to be suspended. To overcome the drawbacks, we developed a decentralized process engine ADPE (agent-based decentralized process engine). ADPE can be embedded in any PSEE to decentralize the PSEE. This paper presents ADPE.