Customization of Software for Implementation on Third Party Platforms

Abstract: An increasingly common scenario in software development, and certainly in webtechnologies, is that companies customize parts of the developed software to run on third party platforms. The purpose of this is often to increase brand recognition or to increase traffic to their websites. Quite often the target platforms are numerous and are far from homogenous while the software itself is required to have preserved functionality in its original environment. This creates numerous difficulties both within the software structure, maintenance and in development routines. This thesis considers some of those difficulties and their potential solutions. Focus is put on an online real estate search company, Booli Search Technologies AB, that would like to offer its partners parts of its platform for implementation on their websites. Booli states both general and specific demands on the customization regarding functionality,preserved performance, security and updates. The report begins with a survey of literature and related work within the area.Interesting solutions are then discussed and evaluated. Finally, a prototypeimplementation is done and evaluated together with Booli and some of its partners from different aspects. The results are presented together with a discussion and possible future improvements. Overall the prototype implementation satisfies the demands stated by Booli, even though some improvements are suggested.