Don't Make Me Repeat MyselfWhat effect will code reusability have on strategic business applications?By Michael J. Hudson Continued from Page 1 CROSS-ENTERPRISE REUSABILITYOf course, just knowing and using only what your organization has internally found to be reusable is not enough. Buying (or for that matter selling) reusable components and software frameworks from other companies can be cost-effective as well. If 50 percent of the job is already done and you can get it at a lower price than the cost of developing it yourself, then this kind of enterprise collaboration definitely increases your return on investment. Although component-selling businesses have just started popping up in the private industry, the government is actually ahead of the curve. A group of state technology officers have already banded together and created an organization called the National Software Component Exchange. It serves as an online repository that lets state-employed developers find, use, and register components that might be used across state systems. For instance, the set of components that make up the way a state collects income taxes is probably pretty similar from one state to the next. This ability to not have to "reinvent the wheel" has decreased development time, lowered risk, decreased costs, and led to higher-quality software. Private industry sorely needs this kind of cross-enterprise collaboration as well. In fact, the future of reusability relies more heavily on these external component exchanges than upon the ability of a company to find and reuse its own corporate assets. The reason is simple. Third-party components are better tested, more flexible, easier to personalize, and in many cases, much cheaper to purchase than if the company itself tried to do the same thing. In fact, some of the reasons why reusability has taken so long to take hold are because the focus was on internal applications rather than external third-party providers. To go back to my previous car example, notice that third-party providers make most car parts. Seldom is the actual car manufacturer also the sole producer of any given part. As more companies see the benefit of reusable components, a whole new industry - now only in its infancy - will arise. JUST THE BEGINNINGReusability has always been a goal for most companies, but only now has the industry really started to pursue it. Although the concept has been around for a long time, no one has been able make it completely work on the level that people have dreamed about. However, many reusability problems are really reflections of the fact that computer science is a very young discipline. Older industries have paved the way for using these concepts effectively, and the IT industry is now beginning to figure out ways to do the same. However, another old adage may be apt: The only thing people learn from history is that people never learn from history. I hope that doesn't mean that reusability will never happen and we will just keep reinventing the wheel, so to speak. Rather, I interpret this old saying to mean that the IT industry will repeat the same concepts of reusability and replaceability seen in other industries. The current industry innovations and the increased enthusiasm for the topic of reusability have me betting that history, or for that matter, coding won't repeat itself. Or will it? Michael J. Hudson [mhudson@blueprinttech.com] is a framework engineer for Blueprint Technologies Inc., a software architecture firm based in Falls Church, Va. His current work includes developing XML-based architectural solutions for various clients including NASA. He has had extensive professional work in developing and tying together multitiered information systems for a number of different companies. RESOURCESRational Unified Process: www.rational.com/products/rup/index.jsp Reusable Asset Specification: www.rational.com/eda/value.jsp
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