A survey on software components search and retrieval

In the literature, several works that explore component search may be found, since the decade of 90 until today. Current research on component-based software engineering (CBSE) point to the creation of component markets, which allow reuse to occur at large scale. Although search mechanisms play a very important role in such markets, the literature is quite poor in putting these two concerns together. This work presents a survey about the main research on component search, and discusses how should be a mechanism to efficiently search components, in order to offer support for future component markets.