A Service-Oriented Approach for Specifying Component-Based Systems

The principal challenge in requirements engineering for component-based software systems is to develop models that allow us to make the best use of the available component technology by balancing aspects of requirements, business concerns, and architectural considerations with capabilities embodied in software components. Unfortunately, the critical steps of requirements elicitation and modelling are often ignored in requirements methods for component-based systems. Requirements elicitation not only allows the developer to establish the actors and stakeholders associated with the system, it also provides a means for identifying and structuring their needs. Requirement modelling in component-based development, is an important vehicle for contextualizing, scoping and mapping user requirements to possible blackbox component solutions. This paper proposes an approach to requirements definition that uses the nation of viewpoints and services. Viewpoints provide us with a framework for eliciting and structuring user requirements; services provide us with a mechanism for mapping the requirements to components and component architectures. Together, they provide traceable progression from initial system formulation through to system design and composition