The evaluation of framework reusability

Since reuse costs are often higher than expected, several approaches to development with reuse have been proposed. Among the most interesting is the idea of frameworks: sets of single components collaborating according to predefined cooperation rules. This approach can have a great impact on the reusability of parts of a software system, but it is not an easy task to give a quantitative measure of this reusability. The existing reusability metrics can be used, but the results are not fully satisfactory, since they do not take into account the peculiar characteristics of a framework and the particular way it is reused (a mix between black box reuse and white box reuse). For these reasons, a set of criteria adapting the traditional reusability metrics is proposed. These criteria try to evaluate the four main factors affecting the reusability of a framework: portability, adaptability, understandability, and confidence.