Outline of Domain Theory As a New Approach to Software Reuse

S/W 재사용을 위한 새로운 접근법으로서의 Domain Theory의 개요

Over the years, several different approaches have been proposed to enhance the practice of software reuse. These approaches vary in reuse abstraction levels or application domains they focus on. However, it seems that they do not adequately meet the needs of software designers in planning and managing reuse. One reason may be the lack of conceptually well-established framework supporting work domain analysis and modeling. As a new viable solution to this problem, Sutcliffe and his colleagues developed Domain Theory , which is introduced in this paper. Utilizing multidisciplinary perspective, such as cognitive psychology, management science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. it provides a schematic framework that defines a comprehensive library of generic and reusable models of domain knowledge in terms of generic tasks and meta-domains. It also provides useful methods and guidelines for software reuse, emphasizing the concept of abstraction process in a designer s mind. This paper firstly gives a brief overview of fundamentals of software reuse. Next, it explains the foundation of domain theory and discusses its applicability to software reuse. In particular, the taxonomy of meta-domains and the types of generic tasks are described in more detail. Finally, the future research framework, which primarily addresses the problem of how to apply the domain theory to various work domains, is proposed.