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Software Engineering

Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Software

Using Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software components to build systems has been proposed as a means of developing software with reduced risk and cost, while increasing functionality and capability of the system.

To that end, NRC-IIT has been investigating the issues involved in implementing systems partially or wholly constructed from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products since 1994.

Members of the Software Engineering Group are currently engaged in the following research activities:

increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of ongoing COTS maintenance and management
designing software architectures to support these activities and implementing a process based on walkthroughs and inspections to verify the correct application of software architectures
developing a tutorial, COTS Software Product Evaluation for Practitioners, in cooperation with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)

Research results will provide:

architectures for COTS-based systems
contextual evaluation of COTS products
wrappers and gluing techniques
component-based development
cost estimation for COTS

Researchers expect these results to be of interest to software system integrators, application developers and component suppliers, among others.

Related NRC-IIT Publications

Research Contact

Dr. Mark Vigder
Research Officer
Software Engineering
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 249A
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 991-6972
Fax: +1 (613) 952-7151
E-mail: Mark Vigder

Business Contact

Dr. George Forester
Business Development Officer
Business Development Office, NCR
NRC Institute for Information Technology
1200 Montreal Road
Building M-50, Room 203
Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6
Telephone: +1 (613) 993-3478
Fax: +1 (613) 952-0074
E-mail: George.Forester@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca