A survey of component based system quality assurance and assessment

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. Hence, techniques and methods for quality assurance and assessment of a component based system would be different from those of the traditional software engineering methodology. It is essential to quantify factors that contribute to the overall quality, for instances, the trade off between cost and quality of a component, analytical techniques and formal methods, and quality attribute definitions and measurements. This paper presents a literature survey of component based system quality assurance and assessment; the areas surveyed include formalism, cost estimation, and assessment and measurement techniques for the following quality attributes: performance, reliability, maintainability and testability. The aim of this survey is to help provide a better understanding of CBSD in these aspects in order to facilitate the realisation of its potential benefits of delivering quality systems.