ISBN : 978-81-963532-2-3 (E-Book) Advantagesof softwarereuse Software products are expensive. Software project managers are worried about the high cost ofsoftware developmentand are desperately lookfor waystocutdevelopmentcost.A possibleway to reduce development cost is to reuse parts from previously developed software. In additionto reduced development cost and time, reuse also leads to higher quality of the developedproductssincethereusable components areensured to havehigh quality. Artifactsthatcanbereused It is important to know about the kinds of the artifacts associated with software development thatcan be reused. Almost all artifacts associated with software development, including project planandtest plancan bereused. However, theprominent itemsthat can beeffectivelyreusedare: • Requirementsspecification • Design • Code • Testcases • Knowledge Prosandconsofknowledgereuse Knowledge is the most abstract development artifact that can be reused. Out of all the reuseartifacts i.e. requirements specification, design, code, test cases, reuse of knowledge occursautomatically without any conscious effort in this direction. However, two major difficulties withunplanned reuse of knowledge are that a developer experienced in one type of software productmight be included in a team developing a different type of software. Also, it is difficult toremember the details of the potentially reusable development knowledge. A planned reuse ofknowledge can increase the effectiveness of reuse. For this, the reusable knowledge should besystematically extracted and documented. But, it is usually very difficult to extract and documentreusableknowledge. Easinessof reuseofmathematicalfunctions Theroutinesofmathematicallibrariesarebeingreusedverysuccessfullybyalmosteveryp rogrammer. No one inhis right mind would think of writing a routine to compute sine orcosine. Reuse of commonly used mathematical functions is easy. Several interesting aspectsemerge. Cosine means the same to all. Everyone has clear ideas about what kind argumentshouldcosinetake,thetypeofprocessingtobecarriedoutandtheresultsreturned. Secondly, 213 Software Engineering Keerthana P, Manasa KN, Ganga D Bengal of
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