Abstract

Software components and services (SCS) are playingan increasingly important role in software engineering,particularly as building blocks of systems that demand highquality and dependability. A major impediment to advancesin developing such systems is the difficulty of providingobjective evaluations and conducting rigorous experimentsto determine the efficacy of selected SCS and the resultingsystems. This paper presents a framework that facilitatessuch experimentation to measure SCS quality in the targetusage environment, to provide unbiased quality assessment,and to support effective usage of SCS in high qualityapplications. We are building a comprehensive collection of1) usage scenarios in a set of target operational profiles and2) a flexible defect classification and analysis framework andrelated quality analyses. Our work will form the first step ofan operational experience factory for SCS. Resulting repositoriesand supporting facilities from applying our approachto web-based applications are included to demonstrate itsviability.