Improving Component Interoperability Information

Apart from introducing various benefits, the emerging software component technology raises a serious problem: How can developers as well as users manage interoperability issues and versions of a huge amount of components developed worldwide by independent providers? The current general way to describe interoperability information is to provide the component’s interface definition and some additional informal documentation. This level of information is obviously not detailed enough to manage interoperability issues on a reasonable level. Unfortunately, component descriptions enhanced with semantic information are restricted to specific types of components. At the moment a general established technique for the complete description of semantic interoperability of components does not exist. This paper outlines two contributions to an improved component interoperability management. The ideas originate from the GIPSY project that focuses on cooperative software engineering. The general more pragmatic approach is the enrichment of interoperability information by information extracted from the corresponding component development process. The second approach is restricted to the specific class of development-tool components. A technique to describe interoperability on a high semantic level is outlined. It is based on a combination of compiler-compiler technology with the object-oriented paradigm.