摘要: Component-based software development (CBSD) is emerging as a new software development paradigm that promises to revolutionize how to approach reuse in software development. CBSD promises to allow developers to develop entire software systems by simply integrating together commercial off-the-shelf software components or internal components from company repositories. This paper presents an introduction and overview to CBSD. In this paper the general view of what it means to be developing software using the CBSD paradigm is discussed including several challenges impeding the realization of maximum benefit from using component based development techniques. Development processes tailored to the unique needs of component-based development can help address many of these challenges. A summary and comparison of several existing component based software development processes is presented. This paper concludes by summarizing the capability of existing processes and by suggesting how future process enhancements may better address the challenges of component based software development.