Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu!eichmann@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu
From: eichmann@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (David A Eichmann,316K)
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Reasons for low ADT reuse
Message-ID: <466@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu>
Date: 22 Sep 89 17:49:15 GMT
References: <11963@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Sender: news@h.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu
Lines: 24

From article <11963@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, by scotth@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Scott Henninger):
> 
> ...It will take thousands or
> millions of components to make a truly useable software reuse
> environment.  There is no way that a human can keep track of what is
> available at that kind of scale.
>

   The key word here is *environment*...requiring an electrical engineer
to have memorized the specifications of all components available for use
in a circuit is a similarly daunting requirement.

   What's truly necessary in this setting is a library retrieval system
capable of narrowing the field of search to a managable set of alternatives.
Prieto-Diaz' work on faceted classification of software is one such approach
Classification of a component can be costly, but this can be amortized over
the life of its retrieval and reuse.

- Dave
------ 
David Eichmann
Dept. of Statistics and Computer Science
West Virginia University                  Phone: (304) 293-3607
Morgantown, WV  26506                     Email: eichmann@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu