Search results for "software maintenance"

Seminars on Software Maintenance and Evolution: An Empirical Study of the Background Factors Affecting Student Success

2013

Software maintenance and evolution (SME) is an important but challenging topic area for university-level computer science education. Seminars can be used to provide students with versatile and up-to-date knowledge on scien- tifically relevant issues. We organized three systematic university-level seminars on SME. In these seminars 127 groups have each been assigned the task of analyzing one scientific SME article. The main results concern background factors re- lating to the students, groups and articles as these affect student success in the seminars. This paper presents a strict statis- tical analysis and a discussion of these factors. Fourteen hypotheses were set and tested regarding the…

Hypertext support for the information needs of software maintainers

2004

Making changes safely to programs requires program comprehension and satisfaction of the information needs of software maintainers. In this paper we provide insights into improving hypertext-based software maintenance support by analyzing those information needs. There exists a series of four earlier, detailed-level empirical studies on the information needs of professional C program maintainers. We focus on these studies, synthesize their results and determine sources from which the required information might be attained. An experimental research tool, the HyperSoft system, is used to demonstrate the satisfaction of information needs and the system is analytically evaluated against the nee…

ASLA: reverse engineering approach for software license information retrieval

2006

Software maintenance and reuse require identification of the applied software licenses. The information needs of maintainers and reusers can be supported by reverse engineering tools at different information retrieval levels. The paper presents a reverse engineering approach called ASLA for retrieving license information typically used in OSS. User needs, system architecture, tool features, and tool evaluation are presented. The implemented tool features include support for identifying source file dependencies and licenses in source files. The tool is evaluated against another tool for license information extraction. ASLA supports the same programming languages as GCC. License identificatio…

Analysis of Ten Reverse Engineering Tools

2009

Reverse engineering tools can be used in satisfying the information needs of software maintainers. Especially in case of maintaining large-scale legacy systems tool support is essential. Reverse engineering tools provide various kinds of capabilities to provide the needed information to the tool user. In this paper we analyze the provided capabilities in terms of four aspects: provided data structures, visualization mechanisms, information request specification mechanisms, and navigation features. We provide a compact analysis of ten representative reverse engineering tools for supporting C, C++ or Java: Eclipse Java Development Tools, Wind River Workbench (for C and C++), Understand (for C…

Understanding and analyzing SQL/CLI database usage of Java software: empirical study

2005

Modeling and Verification of Symbolic Distributed Applications Through an Intelligent Monitoring Agent

2022

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) represent a key component in emerging distributed computing paradigms such as IoT, Ambient Intelligence, and Smart Cities. In these contexts, the difficulty of testing, verifying, and monitoring applications in their intended scenarios ranges from challenging to impractical. Current simulators can only be used to investigate correctness at source code level and with limited accuracy. This paper proposes a system and a methodology to model and verify symbolic distributed applications running on WSNs. The approach allows to complement the distributed application code at a high level of abstraction in order to test and reprogram it, directly, on deployed network…

Experiences from Software Maintenance Seminars: Organizing Three Seminars with 127 Groups

2009

Software maintenance and evolution (SME) is an important but problematic topic-area for university-level computer science education. Seminars can be used to provide versatile and up-to-date knowledge for students regarding scientifically relevant issues. We have organized three systematic university-level seminars on SME with a total of 127 seminar groups. Each group has been assigned a task of analyzing one scientific SME-article. The main results include the general confirmed feasibility of the selected seminar-based approach. The paper describes the background of the seminars, their contents, and experiences concerning organization and feasibility of the seminars. The results support org…

Defining the Process for Making Software System Modernization Decisions

2006

This paper outlines a process for software system modernization decisions. The rationale of the process is explained and the process is defined in a way that allows its adaptation for other organizations and situations. The process is a light-weight one and is based on the use of objective data. The procedures for collecting the data are explained. The process has been used to solve a real industrial decision making situation in which the process was successful.

Automatic Reengineering in MDA Using Rewriting Logic as Transformation Engine

2005

Legacy systems are information systems that have been developed by means of methods, tools and database management systems that have become obsolete, but they are still being used due to their reliability. As time goes on, the maintenance of this software becomes more complex, expensive and painful. The MOMENT framework supports automatic formal model transformations in MDA. This model transformation approach is based on the algebraic specification of models and benefits from mature term rewriting system technology to perform model transformation using rewriting logic. In this paper, we present how we apply this formal transformation mechanism to recover a legacy relational database, obtain…

Supporting Impact Analysis by Program Dependence Graph Based Forward Slicing

2007

Since software must evolve to meet the typically changing requirements, source code modifications can not be avoided. Impact analysis is one of the central and relatively demanding tasks of software maintenance. It is constantly needed while aiming at ensuring the correctness of the made modifications. Due to its importance and challenging nature automated support techniques are required. Theoretically, forward slicing is a very suitable technique for that purpose. Therefore, we have implemented a program dependence graph (PDG) based tool, called GRACE, for it. For example, due to the typical rewritings of Visual Basic programs there is a great need to support their impact analysis. However…