IF A CAR COMPANY discovered that it was rebuilding all the pieces of an engine from scratch every time, even though it had a warehouse of the necessary parts already built, then heads would roll, and the inventory would be put to use. But every day, large, organized, and profitable corporations create and re-create applications from scratch -- even though, stockpiled somewhere on the corporate network, they already have pieces of code that could be reused to build the application.

In fact, developers have toyed with the concept of reuse for nearly as long as software has existed but have mostly failed because they lacked ways to identify, catalog, test, manage, and find components once they were built. However, the technology pieces are finally coming together to help developers reuse code and components rather than reinvent the wheel every time they embark on a new project.

The advent of Web services has meant that applications will have to be built and delivered in a more componentized fashion, and a marketplace of prewritten component brokers is emerging along with hosted development options. Analyst firm Gartner in Stamford, Conn., projects that by 2003 70 percent of new applications will be assembled by using prewritten software components and application frameworks. It is finally a realistic possibility for developers to start managing and storing code and, more important, reusing it.

Advantages of reuse

The main benefits of reusing components include faster development, increased software quality, and cost savings, according to Sam Patterson, CEO of component seller ComponentSource in Kennesaw, Ga.

Reusing in-house code or buying components that already exist reduces the cost of development and saves programmers from continually revisiting standard steps in software development, such as business processes, process flow between components in a framework, and even testing the code.

For example, nearly 40 percent of the time spent in a typical development cycle is on debugging code, according to John Lam, head of the software division and software training at Wintellect, a Knoxville, Tenn.-based software consulting firm. Using prewritten components allows developers to save debugging time and increase productivity.

"By reusing components, companies can get the most mileage out of what they already have," says Tyler McDaniel, senior analyst for application strategies at Boston-based Hurwitz Group.

Web services

As companies begin to plan for Web services and implement platforms, such as Microsoft's .NET or Sun's Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE), now is the time to institute a reuse plan or program.

"There is a realization that, from an application model, J2EE is here to stay, which makes reuse worthwhile," says Sanjay Sarathy, director of product marketing at iPlanet E-commerce Solutions in Palo Alto, Calif. "The idea of how to bring components into a Web services model is one of implementation.

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