W. Narzt, J. Pichler, K. Pirklbauer, M. Zwinz: A Reusability Concept for Process Automation Software, Proceedings of 11th International Conference Software Engineering&its Applications (ICSEA 98), Paris, France, December 8-10, 1998, Preprints Vol.2.
Reusability of software is an important prerequisite for cost and time-optimized software development. This is especially true for custom software produced for only one application; process automation software in the hot rolling mill domain is a typical example of such software. This paper presents the special requirements on software in this domain and shows how a reusability concept helps to decrease overall development time. Exploiting reuse to reduce development time cannot be restricted to inner reusability as supported by object-oriented programming; furthermore, reusability of software components does not suffice to achieve reusable software. This paper introduces a combination of concepts that applies object-oriented and component-oriented techniques together with parameterization and flexible data handling. Additionally, we discuss the effect of standardization of some inner parts of the process automation software on the reusability of the whole software.