An experiment in software component retrieval

Our research centers around exploring methodologies for developing reusable software, and developing methods and tools for building inter-enterprise information systems with reusable components. In this paper, we focus on an experiment in which different component indexing and retrieval methods were tested. The results are surprising. Earlier work had often shown that controlled vocabulary indexing and retrieval performed better than full-text indexing and retrieval [IEEE Trans. Software Engng (1994) 1, IEEE Trans. Software Engng 17 (1991) 800], but the differences in performance were often so small that some questioned whether those differences were worth the much greater cost of controlled vocabulary indexing and retrieval [Commun. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 28 (1985) 289, Commun. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 29 (1986) 648]. In our experiment, we found that full-text indexing and retrieval of software components provided comparable precision but much better recall than controlled vocabulary indexing and retrieval of components. There are a number of explanations for this somewhat counter-intuitive result, including the nature of software artifacts, and the notion of relevance that was used in our experiment. We bring to the fore some fundamental questions related to reuse repositories. q 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.