A Reuse Definition, Assessment, and Analysis Framework for UML

Abstract

This chapter examines a formal framework for reusability assessment of development-time components and classes via metrics, refactoring guidelines, and algorithms. It argues that software engineers seeking to improve design reusability stand to benefit from tools that precisely measure the potential and actual reuse of software artifacts to achieve domain-specific reuse for an organization’s current and future products. The authors consider the reuse definition, assessment, and analysis of a UML design prior to the existence of source code, and include dependency tracking for use case and class diagrams in support of reusability analysis and refactoring for UML. The integration of these extensions into the UML tool Together Control Center to support reusability measurement from design to development is also considered.