Software Component Search
Author
Luqi
Goguen, Joseph
Nguyen, Doan
Messeguer, Jose
Zhang, Du
Berzins, Valdis
Date
1996Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
An important problem in software development is to make better use of software libraries by improving
the search and retrieval process, that is, by making it easier to find the few components you may want among
the many you do not want. This paper suggests some ideas to improve this process: (1) Associate an algebraic
specification with each software component; these specifications should include complete syntactic information,
but need have only partial semantic information. (2) User queries consist of syntactic declarations plus results for
sample executions. (3) User queries may be posed in standard programming notation, which is then automatically
translated into algebraic notation. (4) Search is organized as ranked multi-level filtering, where each level yields
a ranked set of partial matches. (5) Early stages of filtering narrow the search space by using computationally
simple procedures, such as checking that the number of types is adequate. (6) Middle levels may find partial
signature matches. (7) Pre-computed catalogues (i.e., indexes) can speed up early and middle level filtering.
(8) Semantic information is used in a final filter with term rewriting, but complete verification is not attempted.
(9) The series of filters is implemented incrementally, so as to backtrack to lower ranked components in case of
failure. This approach avoids the need for complex theorem proving, and does not require any knowledge of
algebraic specification from the user. Moreover, it does not require either specifications or queries to be complete
or even fully correct, because it yields partial matches ranked by how well they fit the query. The paper concludes
with a description of some preliminary experiments and some suggestions for further experiments.
Description
Journal of Systems Integration (Special issue on Computer Aided Prototyping), Vol. 6, No. 1-2, pp. 93-134.
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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