Component-Based Software (October 1994)

Automation of Dependable Software Generation with Reusable Components

Sponsor: Lucent Technologies, Inc.

• Project Performance Period: 2/15/1995 - 12/31/1997
• Total project (est.): $5,435,000.00
• Requested ATP funds: $2,000,000.00

The project originally proposed by AT&T Switching Systems is now at Lucent Technologies. It addresses a basic goal of speeding the development of reliable, custom-designed software by providing "non-traditional" programmers with an easy-to-use, graphics-oriented software assembly system that handles the complexity of building working systems by using libraries of software components. Experts in particular application areas will be able to use this system to design their own software and automatically generate executable code without a detailed knowledge of programming. To make a very large problem more tractable, the Lucent approach is to design software components for specific, carefully defined domains of applications. Within their domain, the components can be highly reusable. The prototype project will build a graphics-based "Software Assembly Workbench" and a small components library for the domain of telecommunications applications. The prototype will be suitable for constructing custom telephone software applications such as interactive voice response or "video-on-demand." A key, high-risk goal of the Lucent project is the use of component libraries to build reliable, fault-tolerant systems. The task of building reliable hardware systems--given that the individual hardware components are known to be reliable--is well understood, but there is no comparably accepted practice for combining reusable software components into a demonstrably reliable system, even if the individual components are known to be reliable. The Lucent project also will investigate problems of dependable interoperation of the new component-based systems with "legacy" software, and revenue collection based on component usage data. Both are relatively high-risk tasks.

For project information:

Janet Lumsden, (630) 713-5352
j.e.lumsden@lucent.com

ATP Project Manager

Barbara Cuthill, (301) 975-3273
barbara.cuthill@nist.gov