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Information Demand Model for Software Unit Reuse
Zinn M, Fischer KP, Schütte A, Phippen AD
Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering, June 20-22, Las Vegas, USA, pp32-39, ISBN: 978-1-880843-82-6, 2011
Won Best Paper Award

Typically, reusable software units (like classes, components and services) in object oriented development environments have to provide a certain amount of information. This information is needed during the development and runtime phase. Typical information types are for example documentation, specification, metrics, technical properties, etc. In different usage levels, information may have different values for software engineers. The availability of information determines the capabilities of a unit, due to different users employing different information to decide about the reuse of a unit. Again, other information is critical for the success of the entire development process when applying certain procedure models. Thus, retrieval of these units and their contents is important for reuse. However, this is still a problem since a lot of expert knowledge is needed to find, adapt, and integrate reusable software units. To solve this problem, it is necessary to understand information demand in the area of software unit reuse. This paper discusses an existing information demand model of the knowledge science area and applies it to the field of software unit reuse to support analysis of software reuse problems To conclude, a model will be defined to visualise the coherence between information demand and software unit reuse knowledge.

Zinn M, Fischer KP, Schütte A, Phippen AD