Search-Driven Software Engineering
Abstract
Although the use of web services and component technologies is becoming widespread, and more software is freely accessible on the Internet than ever before, there has been little change in levels of software reuse. Most applications are still created by integrating in-house legacy software and self-developed modules, rather than by assembling third party components/services, despite the fact that in many development situations, perfectly suitable software components are available on the Internet.
The main barrier to third party software reuse, whether it be of program modules, web services or more complex components, is still the overhead involved in finding software that is “fit for purpose”. Most developers still feel that the “build” option is more cost effective that the “find” or “buy” option. However, this balance has started to change in the last few years with the advent of a new generation of code search engines.
Not only do search engines index far more components than was possible before, but they make it much easier to find software that meet a particular need. They also make it possible to consider component reuse during early stages of development such as modelling and design. In this talk Colin Atkinson will introduce some of the key features of the latest generation of code search engines and will explain how software engineering practices can be enhanced by integrating code search into the development process.
Speaker
Prof. Dr. Colin Atkinson, Professor of Software Engineering
Colin Atkinson holds the chair of Software Engineering at the University of Mannheim. Before that he held a joint position as a professor at the University of Kaiserslautern and a project leader at the affiliated Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering.
From 1991 until 1997 he was an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Houston - Clear Lake. His research interests are focused on the use of advanced software engineering approaches, such as model driven development, service-oriented architectures and product line engineering, in the development of dependable computing systems.
He received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in computer science from Imperial College, London, in 1990 and 1985 respectively, and received his B.Sc . in Mathematical Physics from the University of Nottingham 1983.