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What Do Specifications Have to Do with CBD?

by Paul Allen

The current upsurge of component-based development (CBD) reflects the attraction of the plug-and-play metaphor in software development. A component is a black box that talks to its customers through its interfaces alone. Simply plug the boxes together, and there's an application. Great! So why is CBD not the cure-all that some folks would have us believe? There are lots of answers to that question. Right now, I'd like to focus on one piece: specification. To do that, we need to start with interfaces -- the sets of "buttons" (operations) presented by a component to the outside world.

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What Do Specifications Have to Do with CBD? 23 June 1999

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