The implications of employing component based software design in non-commercial applications

Paper in proceeding, 2016

Software development today is riddled with various challenges, and hangs on the balance of cost and profit. The industry is yearning for shorter times to market without any reduction in quality. Since component based software engineering emerged as a prominent and solid approach to alleviate these challenges, the question remains are there any benefits of employing this paradigm in other areas, excluding commercial applications, such as the area of academic research. This paper considers a different aspect of component oriented design application. It tries to demonstrate the implications of its use in a case study of scientific research on a pattern classification use case, where the majority of component advantages such as cost reduction or profit maximization do not apply. The use case presented in this case study utilizes component based software engineering to build components of a classification system. Feature extraction, classifiers and evaluation procedures are interchangeable components which enable the discussion regarding the benefits of component based development in non-commercial areas of application.