Generating large-scale repositories of reusable artifacts for conceptual design of information systems

The design and construction of reusable artifacts is a labor-intensive and demands significant time and effort from expert designers. The up-front investment needed for constructing repositories of reusable artifacts is, therefore, often difficult to justify without immediate benefits. This research proposes a methodology, called the Domain Fragment Creator (DFC), to overcome this problem. It relies on a new type of reusable artifact, called domain fragments that can be generated by examining commonalities and variations in existing designs. The paper describes the methodology and evaluates the quality of the resulting repository using metrics such as domain coverage.