Supporting software maintenance with non-functional information

This paper highlights the role of non-functional information (about efficiency, reliability and other software attributes) of software components in software maintenance, focusing in the component programming framework. Non-functional information is encapsulated in modules bound to both definitions and implementations of software components and it is written as expressions in a classical programming language. It is shown with an example how this notation supports software maintenance, with the help of an algorithm which is able to select the best implementation of a software component in its context of use, meaning by ''best'' the one that better fits to its non-functional requirements. As a conclusion. we may say that our proposal will probably reduce maintenance costs in case of software modifications due to changes in the non-functional environment of the system and also to changes in the NF-behaviour of software components, including migration to other platforms.