This paper proposes a method to extract and visualize a library update history in a project. The method identifies reused library versions by comparing source code in a product with existing versions of the library so that developers can understand when their own copy of a library has been copied, modified, and updated.

A component connection enables a component to use the functionality of other components directly, without generating adapters or other mechanisms at run-time. In conventional component connection models, the connection between components, particularly third-party components, is very costly for code reuse because the component source code must be modified if the types of requester-side and provider-side are different. This paper proposes a new component model, built upon an existing component architecture, which abandons a component service type and connects components based on a method type collection of the provider and requester components. Our model enables flexible connections owing to relaxed component matching, in which the system that implements our model automatically converts values of parameters, return values, and exceptions between required methods and provided ones within a well-defined range. As a result of experimental evaluations, it is found that our model is superior to conventional models in terms of the component-use cost and the capability of changing connections.

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 presents a model for the naming, packing, version control, storage, and retrieval of software assets. The naming and version control schemes are based on content-derived coding of the asset body. The name-to-asset mapping can be fixed or be varying with time. The packing scheme is designed so that the asset integrity verification and authentication information is made an intrinsic part of the packed asset. A comparison with an existing naming and version control scheme is given. The storage and retrieval scheme is a unification of four most commonly used methods, namely the enumerative method, the keyword-based method, the faceted method, and the text-based method. This unification makes it possible for the users to access heterogeneous repositories (with different storage and retrieval methods) simultaneously, using the same tool set and query syntax. The degradation functions technique is used to automatically broaden queries. A demonstrative retrieval tool is described to show how the unification of methods is done at the user interface level.

For the improvement of software quality and productivity, the author aims at realizing a software development environment to develop software through utilizing the merits of group work. Since networking is necessary for collaborative software development, he has developed a software distributed development environment for collaborative software development. In this environment, discussions about software design are held through a communication network, and the contents of discussions are recorded as software design decisions and decision rationale. One feature of this environment is that the contents of discussions can be recorded in on-line real time and reused without reconstructing the information recorded through this environment. This paper clarifies the essential conditions for actualizing this environment and proposes an information structure model for recording the contents of discussions that actualizes the above-mentioned feature. The effectiveness of the proposed model is proved through an example of its application to software design discussions.

Key technologies are presented for enhancing the reusability of software in communication switching node systems along with the results obtained from porting software between several types of node systems, including N-ISDN, B-ISDNs, and Intelligent Networks. A reusable software platform based on object-oriented designing and programming techniques has been established and mechanisms for reusing object classes has been developed. Analysis of the reusability showed that this platform can be applied to various types of communication systems and that an average of more than three quarters of a system's programs can be ported. By using our software reuse framework to develop software components, we were able to reduce the time needed to develop device management programs by about 30%. Furthermore, about 80% of these programs can be ported to other systems, so introducing this platform improves software programming productivity.