Experience in using a software bus to build reusable scientific software

We describe our experience in using a software bus architecture (1,2) to build a fault location system from reusable software parts. The system consists of ‘‘plug compatible’’ software components connected by a software bus. This architecture makes it possible to assemble the system either as a collection of cooperating distributed processes, or as a single program running on a single computer. Each component is useful in its own right, making reuse probable, and inviting commercialization. Development effort is significantly higher using this technique. However, the benefits (in our experience) far outweigh the costs. Experience in using the system is described in a poster session (3) in this conference.