Round Tripping in Component Based Software Development

Several approaches have been proposed in literature to develop COTS-based software systems. Most of these focus on a functional and non-functional evaluation to select one or more products needing to be customized for specific requirements. Developing on the basis of components is however constraining for the software users as well as for software developers willing to provide tailored solutions. In this paper we propose a component-based development process using a two level components selection procedure with feedback loops. Analysts select one or more components to fulfill the identified goals and soft goals then a multi-agent system (MAS) managing the business logic delegates them the functional execution. Runtime feedback allows analysts to take decisions for component customization, abandonment or the inclusion of new ones so that equilibrium is found by round tripping between the analysis stage and the MAS execution.