Software Engineering, 10th Edition

15.1 The reuse landscape

Over the past 20 years, many techniques have been developed to support software reuse. These techniques exploit the facts that systems in the same application domain are similar and have potential for reuse, that reuse is possible at different levels from simple functions to complete applications, and that standards for reusable components facilitate reuse. Figure 15.3 shows the “reuse landscape”—different ways of implementing software reuse. Each of these approaches to reuse is briefly described in Figure 15.4.

Given this array of techniques for reuse, the key question is “which is the most appropriate technique to use in a particular situation?” Obviously, the answer to this question depends on the requirements for ...