TOOLS USA '96

The Impact of Reuse on an Information Age Economy

Brad Cox, George Mason University, USA

This tutorial addresses one of the most perplexing questions of the often-touted transitions to software engineering via reusable software components (Software-ICs) in the small, and to an information age economy in the large. Now that object technologies ranging from object-oriented programming languages to graphical user interfaces to the world wide web have made it technically feasible to manufacture objects made of bits, what does it mean to buy, sell and own them?

BRAD COX is the author of Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach and the originator of the Objective-C programming language. He is a faculty member at George Mason University (Program for Social and Organizational Learning), and founder of the Coalition for Electronic Markets.

Object-Oriented Software Composition

Oscar Nierstrasz, University of Berne, Switzerland

Object-oriented languages and methods support the development of applications from standard software architectures and generic software components as defined by so-called "frameworks", or abstract class hierarchies. Although object-oriented techniques to a large extent support application development from components, it is not generally possible to construct applications merely by composing software components. In this tutorial we will survey compositional software technology, and we will identify some of the current limitations and open problems.

OSCAR NIERSTRASZ is Professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Berne, where he leads a research group in Software Composition. He has served on the program committees of many conferences including ECOOP and OOPSLA, and as the program Chair of ECOOP '93.

Dr. Bertrand Meyer, ISE, USA

Drawing on the experience of thousands of widely reused classes, this presentation will explain the issues, both managerial and technical, that must be addressed for a successful reuse policy. It will review what managers must do to promote reuse in their organization, and describe the technical tools that are necessary to produce large numbers of high-quality reusable components. The technical part of the presentation will be based on the Eiffel approach to reusability and reliability. Attendees will be presented with a number of examples of good (and bad) reusable library design.

BERTRAND MEYER is president of ISE Inc. (Santa Barbara), editor of two book series (Prentice Hall's Object-Oriented Series and Addison-Wesley's Eiffel in Practice), chairman of the TOOLS conferences (Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems) and associate member of the applications section of the French Academy of Sciences. He is the author of many books including two available in Japanese (Object-Oriented Software Construction, Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages), Object Success (a presentation of object technology for managers), Eiffel: The Language, and Reusable Software (on the tutorial's topics).

Encapsulation and Class Interface Specification

Raimund Ege, Florida International University, USA

The tutorial illustrates how encapsulation is supported during software development by analysis and design methodologies and object-oriented programming languages. The major programming languages, such as Eiffel, C++, Smalltalk, and Java are evaluated and compared with regard to their support of encapsulation control and ease of establishing reusable components.

RAIMUND EGE is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Florida International University, Miami. He is author of Programming in an Object-Oriented Environment (Academic Press, 1992) and Object-Oriented Programming with C++ (Academic Press, 1994). He is currently the program chairman of the TOOLS USA conference.