Analysis of Software Binaries for Reengineering-Driven Product Line Architecture\^aAn Industrial Case Study

This paper describes a method for the recovering of software architectures from a set of similar (but unrelated) software products in binary form. One intention is to drive refactoring into software product lines and combine architecture recovery with run time binary analysis and existing clustering methods. Using our runtime binary analysis, we create graphs that capture the dependencies between different software parts. These are clustered into smaller component graphs, that group software parts with high interactions into larger entities. The component graphs serve as a basis for further software product line work. In this paper, we concentrate on the analysis part of the method and the graph clustering. We apply the graph clustering method to a real application in the context of automation / robot configuration software tools.Comment: In Proceedings FMSPLE 2015, arXiv:1504.0301

Structured Review of the Evidence for Effects of Code Duplication on Software Quality

This report presents the detailed steps and results of a structured review of code clone literature. The aim of the review is to investigate the evidence for the claim that code duplication has a negative effect on code changeability. This report contains only the details of the review for which there is not enough place to include them in the companion paper published at a conference (Hordijk, Ponisio et al. 2009 - Harmfulness of Code Duplication - A Structured Review of the Evidence)

Information systems evaluation: Navigating through the problem domain

Information systems (IS) make it possible to improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, which can provide competitive advantage. There is, however, a great deal of difficulty reported in the normative literature when it comes to the evaluation of investments in IS, with companies often finding themselves unable to assess the full implications of their IS infrastructure. Although many of the savings resulting from IS are considered suitable for inclusion within traditional accountancy frameworks, it is the intangible and non-financial benefits, together with indirect project costs that complicate the justification process. In exploring this phenomenon, the paper reviews the normative literature in the area of IS evaluation, and then proposes a set of conjectures. These were tested within a case study to analyze the investment justification process of a manufacturing IS investment. The idiosyncrasies of the case study and problems experienced during its attempts to evaluate, implement, and realize the holistic implications of the IS investment are presented and critically analyzed. The paper concludes by identifying lessons learnt and thus, proposes a number of empirical findings for consideration by decisionmakers during the investment evaluation process

Software Product Line Reengineering: A Case Study on the Geographic Domain

The growing adoption of software product lines (SPL) represents perhaps a paradigm shift in software development aiming at improving cost, quality, time to market, and developer productivity. While the underlying concepts are straightforward enough building a family of related products or systems by planned and careful reuse of a base of generalized software development assets the problems can be in the details, as successful product line practice involves domain understanding, technology selection, and so forth. Today, there is an important increment on reporting experiences and lessons about SPL development by capturing aspects that have been gathered during daily practice. Following this line, in this paper we start from our experiences of developing a software product line on the Marine Ecology domain highlighting our reasons for reengineering a previous SPL. Then, we explain step-bystep reengineering activities in terms of motivation, solutions, and lessons learned, which summarize strengths and limitations of the applied practices. Differently from other cases, here we take advantage of using domain standards as well as open source implementations within the geographic domain.Facultad de Informátic

Software Product Line Reengineering: A Case Study on the Geographic Domain

The growing adoption of software product lines (SPL) represents perhaps a paradigm shift in software development aiming at improving cost, quality, time to market, and developer productivity. While the underlying concepts are straightforward enough building a family of related products or systems by planned and careful reuse of a base of generalized software development assets the problems can be in the details, as successful product line practice involves domain understanding, technology selection, and so forth. Today, there is an important increment on reporting experiences and lessons about SPL development by capturing aspects that have been gathered during daily practice. Following this line, in this paper we start from our experiences of developing a software product line on the Marine Ecology domain highlighting our reasons for reengineering a previous SPL. Then, we explain step-bystep reengineering activities in terms of motivation, solutions, and lessons learned, which summarize strengths and limitations of the applied practices. Differently from other cases, here we take advantage of using domain standards as well as open source implementations within the geographic domain.Facultad de Informátic

Software Product Line Reengineering: A Case Study on the Geographic Domain

The growing adoption of software product lines (SPL) represents perhaps a paradigm shift in software development aiming at improving cost, quality, time to market, and developer productivity. While the underlying concepts are straightforward enough building a family of related products or systems by planned and careful reuse of a base of generalized software development assets the problems can be in the details, as successful product line practice involves domain understanding, technology selection, and so forth. Today, there is an important increment on reporting experiences and lessons about SPL development by capturing aspects that have been gathered during daily practice. Following this line, in this paper we start from our experiences of developing a software product line on the Marine Ecology domain highlighting our reasons for reengineering a previous SPL. Then, we explain step-bystep reengineering activities in terms of motivation, solutions, and lessons learned, which summarize strengths and limitations of the applied practices. Differently from other cases, here we take advantage of using domain standards as well as open source implementations within the geographic domain.Fil: Buccella, Agustina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Informática. Departamento Ingeniería de Sistemas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Cechich, Susana Alejandra. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Informática. Departamento Ingeniería de Sistemas; ArgentinaFil: Pol'la, Matías. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Informática. Departamento Ingeniería de Sistemas; ArgentinaFil: Arias, Maximiliano Andrés. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Informática. Departamento Ingeniería de Sistemas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Building an IT Taxonomy with Co-occurrence Analysis, Hierarchical Clustering, and Multidimensional Scaling

Different information technologies (ITs) are related in complex ways. How can the relationships among a large number of ITs be described and analyzed in a representative, dynamic, and scalable way? In this study, we employed co-occurrence analysis to explore the relationships among 50 information technologies discussed in six magazines over ten years (1998-2007). Using hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling, we have found that the similarities of the technologies can be depicted in hierarchies and two-dimensional plots, and that similar technologies can be classified into meaningful categories. The results imply reasonable validity of our approach for understanding technology relationships and building an IT taxonomy. The methodology that we offer not only helps IT practitioners and researchers make sense of numerous technologies in the iField but also bridges two related but thus far largely separate research streams in iSchools - information management and IT management

Analysis reuse exploiting taxonomical information and belief assignment in industrial problem solving

To take into account the experience feedback on solving complex problems in business is deemed as a way to improve the quality of products and processes. Only a few academic works, however, are concerned with the representation and the instrumentation of experience feedback systems. We propose, in this paper, a model of experiences and mechanisms to use these experiences. More specifically, we wish to encourage the reuse of already performed expert analysis to propose a priori analysis in the solving of a new problem. The proposal is based on a representation in the context of the experience of using a conceptual marker and an explicit representation of the analysis incorporating expert opinions and the fusion of these opinions. The experience feedback models and inference mechanisms are integrated in a commercial support tool for problem solving methodologies. The results obtained to this point have already led to the definition of the role of ‘‘Rex Manager’’ with principles of sustainable management for continuous improvement of industrial processes in companies

Software engineering

Today's software systems generally use obsolete technology, are not integrated properly with other software systems, and are difficult and costly to maintain. The discipline of reverse engineering is becoming prominent as organizations try to move their systems up to more modern and maintainable technology in a cost effective manner. The Johnson Space Center (JSC) created a significant set of tools to develop and maintain FORTRAN and C code during development of the space shuttle. This tool set forms the basis for an integrated environment to reengineer existing code into modern software engineering structures which are then easier and less costly to maintain and which allow a fairly straightforward translation into other target languages. The environment will support these structures and practices even in areas where the language definition and compilers do not enforce good software engineering. The knowledge and data captured using the reverse engineering tools is passed to standard forward engineering tools to redesign or perform major upgrades to software systems in a much more cost effective manner than using older technologies. The latest release of the environment was in Feb. 1992