Storing and retrieving software components: a component description manager

The aim of the paper is to present the results of research into component based software development by providing a specification mechanism allowing searching for components in a component repository. A new component classification framework is proposed based on which a Component Description Manager has been designed and implemented. The classification framework combines domain knowledge, ontological information and some semantics to allow descriptions of components to be constructed in a consistent, yet informative way. The Component Description Manager consists of the classification framework and a repository of component descriptions constructed using this framework. This new approach is compared to alternative component repositories and marketplaces.