Study of Process Models and Certification of Components

Component-Based Software Engineering is the process of building software systems from reusable parts which offers the potential to radically advance the way in which software is developed. Component Based Software Development (CBSD) is focused on assembling existing components to build a software system, with a potential benefit of delivering quality systems by using quality components. It departs from the conventional software development process in that it is integration centric as opposed to development centric. The quality of a component-based system using high quality components does not therefore necessarily guarantee a system of high quality, but depends on the quality of its components, and a framework and integration process used. It leads to increased reuse leading to higher quality and reduced time to market. Higher quality means that the components must have a quality stamp in terms of what level of reliability can be expected from them. Thus, the certification stands out as an essential area to evaluate the component reliability level. This paper presents a survey of software component certification research.