Dependency Management in Component-Based Evolving Software Systems

Component-Based Software (CBS) development approach promises reduced development costs due to the concept of reuse. A lot of research has been done for the analysis and design methods of CBS. However, only a few papers address the maintenance and evolution of component-based systems. Dependency analysis is a useful technique that has many applications in software engineering activities, including software understanding, testing, debugging, maintenance and evolution. This paper proposes a matrix-based dependency representation approach for managing dependencies in CBS. A problem has been taken as an example to demonstrate the representation approach which gives adequate evidence for its suitability and usefulness.