BiCom: An Evaluation Framework for COTS Components

Abstract

A major problem facing businesses is the proper evaluation of COTS components and its impact on the cost and quality of the target systems. In the evaluation phase, vendors and purchasers often have conflicting interests over component access. Vendors need to retain control for protecting intellectual property while purchasers need complete access for effective evaluation. Currently, evaluation is often limited to documentation or access to function/time-limited versions of the software. In these circumstances, customers are often forced to purchase candidate components for evaluation purposes. This paper introduces an approach that allows vendors to provide access to their components for evaluation, while retaining control over the implementation. Purchasers can perform extensive evaluation as if they have direct access to the implementation. To achieve this, we have developed a toolkit referred to as the BiCom Framework, which presents two views of a component simultaneously, satisfying both the vendor’s and purchaser’s requirements.