Selecting components in large COTS repositories

The growing availability of COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) components in the software market has concretized the possibility of building whole systems based on components. In this multitude, a recurrent problem is the location and selection of the components that best fit the requirements. Commercial repositories that offer search mechanisms have reduced these difficulties: system integrators can rely on a wider variety of components and can focus better on the composition of systems. The size of the repository can be an initial obstacle but iterative approaches allow integrators to familiarize with the repository’s structure and to formulate effective queries. This paper discusses the search techniques in CLARiFi, a component broker project that supports integrators in the selection of components for systems.