Software components selection process: comparative study

Abstract Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) paradigm aims to develop software by assembling and deploying reusable units, called software components. This approach tries to improve the flexibility, re-usability and maintainability of applications, and helps develop complex and distributed applications deployed on a wide range of platforms, by plugging commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, rather than building them from scratch. In this context, the selection step is very important. It consists of searching and selecting appropriate software components from a set of candidate components in order to satisfy the developer-specific requirements. In the selection process, both functional and non-functional requirements are generally considered. Several component selection processes have been proposed, with the aim of finding and selecting an appropriate software component from a set of candidate components to satisfy the developer's specific requirements