This analytical survey of agent components reveals that the technology will likely form the foundation for flexible, intelligent, Web-based enterprise application systems.
Lukas Märtin · 2001
s the demand for more flexible, adaptable,extensible, and robust Web-based enterpriseapplication systems accelerates, adoptingnew software engineering methodologiesand development strategies becomes criti-cal. These strategies must support the construction ofenterprise software systems that assemble highly flex-ible software components written at different times byvarious developers. Traditional software developmentstrategies and engineering methodologies, whichrequire development of software systems from scratch,fall short in this regard.Component-based software engineering offers anattractive alternative for building Web-based enter-prise application systems. CBSE works by developingand evolving software from selected reusable softwarecomponents, then assembling them within appropriatesoftware architectures. By promoting the use of soft-ware components that commercial vendors or in-housedevelopers build, the component-based software devel-opment approach promises large-scale software reuse.Component-based software development has thepotential to • significantly reduce the development cost andtime-to-market of enterprise software systemsbecause developers can assemble such systemsfrom a set of reusable components rather thanbuilding them from scratch; • enhance the reliability of enterprise software sys-tems—each reusable component undergoes sev-eral review and inspection stages in the course ofits original development and previous uses, andCBSE relies on explicitly defined architectures andinterfaces; • improve the maintainability of enterprise soft-ware systems by allowing new, higher-qualitycomponents to replace old ones; and• enhance the quality of enterprise software sys-tems—application-domain experts develop com-ponents, then software engineers who specializein CBSE assemble those components into enter-prise software systems.