Abstract:Component-Based software construction is a widely used approach in software development, to reduce the engineering effort and speed up the development cycle. Component-Based software systems consist of various components such as third-party components and in-house built components. Due to software changes, a component-based system is usually affected at both the component level and system level. Thus, a change impact analysis is needed to ensure the software quality and support maintenance. Existing research seldom addresses the issue of change impact analysis on component-based software, especially at a system level. This paper proposes a systematic approach to change impact analysis from the components to the system. Firstly, the change impact analysis models are proposed, and the change types are classified. Then, a change identification and an impact analysis are performed using a firewall approach based on the proposed models at both levels. The paper reports the case studies are based on a realistic component-based system. The study results show that the approach is feasible and effective.