Component Certification Process and Standards

Component Certification Process and Standards

Parminder Kaur, Hardeep Singh
Copyright: © 2013 |Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-2958-5.ch002
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Abstract

Component-based technology deals with the process of assembling existing software components in an application such that they interact to satisfy a predefined functionality. The success of component-based software depends on system integrator’s ability to select the most suitable software components for their intended application (Leavens and Sitaraman, 2000; Voas and Payne, 2000; Crnkovic et al., 2001). One persistent and largely unaddressed challenge is how the consumers of software components can obtain a meaningful level of trust in the runtime behaviour of software components. The most frequently cited concerns are centered on issues of security and component behaviour (Wallnau, 2004). Certification is a practical, proven means of establishing trust in various sorts of things in other disciplines and is, therefore a natural contender for developing trust in software components. This is only possible if component suppliers have clear and reliable information about their component’s functional and non-functional properties. The component attributes allow system integrator to better classify the components. The reliability of a component-based software system is dependant on the reliability of the components that is made of. Proper search, selection, and evaluation process of components is considered as cornerstone for the development of any effective component-based system (Alexandre, 2010).This chapter defines certain properties of a component, which are helpful during their classification process along with component certification/accreditation process, which further helps component suppliers to issue the guarantee of claimed functional properties and quality attributes. Component certification framework is also discussed to evaluate the quality of software components with the help of component quality model and measurement mechanism.
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Certification has the goal to offer a general scheme that indicates the quality or compatibility of a component in respect to certain properties. (Wohlin and Runeson,1994) has presented a usage modeling technique, which can be used to formulate usage models for components. This technique will make it possible not only to certify the components, but also to certify the system containing the components. The usage model describes the usage from a structural point of view, which is complemented with a profile describing the expected usage in figures. The failure statistics from the usage test form the input of a hypothesis certification model, which makes it possible to certify a specific reliability level with a given degree of confidence. This certification model becomes the basis for deciding whether the component can be accepted, either for storage as a reusable component or for reuse.

In early years, software products were based on related monolithic building blocks whereas now Component-Based Development (CBD) appeared as a new perspective for software development, aiming at breaking monolithic blocks into interoperable pre-tested components with the promise of reduced development complexity as well as its cost (Sametinger, 1997).

(Voas, 1998, 1999) suggested that independent agencies such as software certification laboratories should assume the role of software product certification and suggests that the only approach that consumers can trust is the certification provided by agencies that are completely independent from the software product providers. A certification methodology using automated technologies, such as black-box testing and fault injection to determine whether the component fits into a specific scenario is defined. This methodology uses three quality assessment techniques to determine the suitability of a candidate COTS component. Black-box component testing is used to determine whether the component quality is high enough. System-level fault injection is used to determine how well a system will tolerate a faulty component. Operational system testing is used to determine how well the system will tolerate a properly functioning component. The methodology can help developers decide whether a component is right for their system, showing how much of someone else’s mistakes the components can tolerate.

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