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cots: Definition and Recommended Links

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Commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) is a term for software or hardware, generally technology or computer products, that are ready-made and available for sale, lease, or license to the general public. They are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The use of COTS is being mandated across many government and business programs, as they may offer significant savings in procurement and maintenance. However, since COTS software specifications are written by external sources, government agencies are sometimes wary of these products because they fear that future changes to the product will not be under their control.

Note that most existing open source software is COTS, as it is licensed to the public. Some claim that fact invalidates the loss-of-control argument since the source code is available. The other school of thought insists on broader meaning of the loss-of-control argument, equating it with loss-of-functional-control where control is not defined as 'access to code', but 'realistic ability to manipulate the code.'

Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf)

other great electronics sites:ee toolbox site

• • cots
    • Commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) is a term for software or hardware, generally technology or computer products, that are ready-made and available for sale, lease, or license to the general public. They are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The use of COTS is being mandated across many government and business programs, as they may offer significant savings in procurement and maintenance. However, since COTS software specifications are written by external sources, government agencies are sometimes wary of these products because they fear that future changes to the product will not be under their control.

      Note that most existing open source software is COTS, as it is licensed to the public. Some claim that fact invalidates the loss-of-control argument since the source code is available. The other school of thought insists on broader meaning of the loss-of-control argument, equating it with loss-of-functional-control where control is not defined as 'access to code', but 'realistic ability to manipulate the code.'

      Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf)

      (Note: The Electronic Engineers Toolbox provides an alternative set of featured links for this word at http://www.cera2.com/cots.htm)

      Featured Links:

      COTS product integration: An architectural approach

      Purchasing and integrating a commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) product can provide substantial benefits to your development project. It can also lead to massive cost overruns, user dissatisfaction, and even project cancellation. There is no single 'silver-bullet' that you can apply to ensure that COTS product integration will go well, but certain best practices can increase the likelihood of success. In this article, you learn how to...
      http://www-128.ibm.com

      Criteria for Selection of COTS Equipment in a Military System

      As the defense industry shifts to bringing commercial products into the DoD inventory, a robust review process that analyzes the COTS item’s expected performance in a military application is imperative to successful fielding of a weapon system. The review process discussed in this paper is based on the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) COTS Review Board (CRB) process.
      http://smaplab.ri.uah.edu/dmsms02/papers/birdsong.pdf

      Identifying Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Product Risks: The COTS Usage Risk Evaluation

      The expansion in use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products has been accompanied by an increase in program failures. Many of these failures have been due to a lack of familiarity with the changed approach that COTS products demand. This report describes the development of an approach to reduce the number of program failures attributable to COTS software: the COTS Usage Risk Evaluation (CURE).
      http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/03.reports/03tr023.html

      Commercial off-the-shelf From Wikipedia

      Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) is a term for software or hardware, generally technology or computer products, that are ready-made and available for sale, lease, or license to the general public. They are often used as alternatives to in-house developments or one-off government-funded developments. The use of COTS is being mandated across many government and business programs, as they may offer significant savings in procurement and...
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf

      Focused COTS and the Cohesive Approach to Embedded Systems

      No one would argue that today is a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) world, but for many COTS users the choice of using COTS has the added meaning of Monster COTS, where only big public companies can make COTS equipment. Nevertheless, there are several unique ways in which smaller companies (Focused COTS) providing the same COTS equipment can make themselves the only logical choice of a hardware provider, regardless of the end...
      http://www.diversifiedtechnology.com/whitepapers/focused_cots-wiki.pdf

      COTS Journal (Digital Edition)

      Taking you into the world of the military acquisition machine, COTS Journal provides in-depth coverage of commercially available embedded technology and its specific uses in military electronics and equipment. The COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) initiative is a revolution in military electronics development, and COTS Journal has helped lead the way. Free to engineers worldwide!
      http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/home/subdig.php

      Operating System Performance in Support of Real-time Middleware

      Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software is being evaluated and/or used in an increasing range of mission-critical distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. Due to substantial R&D investment over the past decade, COTS middleware has recently matured to the point where it is no longer the dominant factor in the overhead, non-determinism, and priority inversion incurred by DRE systems.
      http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/PDF/words-02.pdf

      COTS Journal (USA / Canada)

      If you want to understand what COTS really stands for, this journal is the only publication focused exclusively on the COTS marketplace. New from the Real-Time Group, and available FREE to qualified EE's with a specific focus on embedded military issues. FREE in the USA / Canada only.
      http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/

      Ballista

      Ballista is a project to automatically test commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software for and harden against robustness "bugs" (e.g., "hangs" and "crashes"). In particular, the emphasis is on proper detection and handling of exceptional conditions so that their occurrence does not compromise the integrity of system operation.
      http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/edrc-ballista/www/

      Lessons Learned in Developing Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Intensive Software Systems

      This paper addresses the recent trend of increased COTS use in the National Airspace System (NAS). While the term COTS refers to both hardware and software, the lessons learned reported in this paper are primarily focused on software. It should be noted that this paper is intended to be the first of several papers on the subject and that future publications will include the entire genre of COTS usage.
      http://www.cebase.org/www/researchActivities/COTS/LessonsLearned.pdf

      Explanation: these links are provided as part of our EE glossary project, which seeks to identify the most prominent keywords in embedded systems, embedded software, realtime and rtos, dsp (digital signal processing), system-on-a-chip, microprocessors and microcontrollers, and other constituent elements for embedded systems. While we seek to keep most of the links up-to-date, the user is refered to other primary electronic-based search sites such as: cera2.com, embedded.com, or EDN Magazine. If you have any suggestions of links or definitions, please email!

Mark Twain quote for the day:

We easily perceive that the peoples furthest from civilization are the ones where equality between man and woman are furthest apart- and we consider this one of the signs of savagery. But we are so stupid that we can't see that we thus plainly admit that no civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.
- Notebook, 1895