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)

Implementation issues in product line scoping

Often product line engineering is treated similar to the waterfall model in traditional software engineering, i.e., the different phases (scoping, analysis, architecting, implementation) are treated as if they could be clearly separated and would follow each other in an ordered fashion. However, in practice strong interactions between the individual phases become apparent. In particular, how implementation is done has a strong impact on economic aspects of the project and thus how to adequately plan it. Hence, assessing these relationships adequately in the beginning has a strong impact on performing a product line project right. In this paper we present a framework that helps in exactly this task. It captures on an abstract level the relationships between scoping information and implementation aspects and thus allows to provide rough guidance on implementation aspects of the project. We will also discuss the application of our framework to a specific industrial project

A method for re-modularising legacy code

This thesis proposes a method for the re-modularisation of legacy COBOL. Legacy code often performs a number of functions that if split, would improve software maintainability. For instance, program comprehension would benefit from a reduction in the size of the code modules. The method aims to identify potential reuse candidates from the functions re-modularised, and to ensure clear interfaces are present between the new modules. Furthermore, functionality is often replicated across applications and so the re-modularisation process can also seek to reduce commonality and hence the overall amount of a company's code requiring maintenance. A 10 step method is devised which assembles a number of new and existing techniques into an approach suitable for use by staff not having significant reengineering experience. Three main approaches are used throughout the method; that is the analysis of the PERFORM structure, the analysis of the data, and the use of graphical representations. Both top-down and bottom-up strategies to program comprehension are incorporated within the method as are automatable, and user controlled processes to reuse candidate selection. Three industrial case studies are used to demonstrate and evaluate the method. The case studies range in size to gain an indication of the scalability of the method. The case studies are used to evaluate the method on a step by step basis; both strong points and deficiencies are identified, as well as potential solutions to the deficiencies. A review is also presented to assesses the three main approaches of the methods; the analysis of the PERFORM and data structures, and the use of graphical representations. The review uses the process of software evolution for its evaluation using successive versions of COBOL software. The method is retrospectively applied to the earliest version and the known changes identified from the following versions are used to evaluate the re-modularisations. Within the evaluation chapters a new link within the dominance tree is proposed as is an approach for dealing with multiple dominance trees. The results show that «ach approach provides an important contribution to the method as well as giving a useful insight (in the form of graphical representations) of the process of software evolution

Same Words, Different Meanings: Are Basic IS/IT Concepts Our Self-Imposed Tower Of Babel?

This article began as a response to an exchange of letters concerning the need for more vs. less user participation in IS projects. It grew into an exploration of whether and how ten 1999 CAIS articles use basic IS/IT terms with different meanings and connotations related to the different perspectives of their authors. The article characterizes differences between an IT perspective and a business perspective and categorizes the ten articles accordingly. It then presents numerous quotes from the articles to illustrate differences across the articles in terms of their use of eight basic concepts: system, user, stakeholder, IS project, implementation, reengineering, requirements, and solution. To help understand the differences and their significance, the article makes extensive use of distinctions between work systems, information systems, and projects. When applied to the articles these distinctions raise questions such as whether the term system refers to a work system, information system, or software, and whether the term user refers to hands-on users, people who receive information, or managers whose organizations use information systems. An underlying theme throughout is that the lack of conscious attention to the meaning of basic terms and points of reference may be a significant impediment to effective communication and to our ability to make sense out of research findings and even journalistic anecdotes about what seemed to work or not work in particular situations. NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS A FOLLOW UP TO ALTER\u27S ARTICLE 13 IN VOLUME 1 OF CAIS ON THE THEORY OF I

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

A framework for deriving semantic web services

Web service-based development represents an emerging approach for the development of distributed information systems. Web services have been mainly applied by software practitioners as a means to modularize system functionality that can be offered across a network (e.g., intranet and/or the Internet). Although web services have been predominantly developed as a technical solution for integrating software systems, there is a more business-oriented aspect that developers and enterprises need to deal with in order to benefit from the full potential of web services in an electronic market. This ‘ignored’ aspect is the representation of the semantics underlying the services themselves as well as the ‘things’ that the services manage. Currently languages like the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) provide the syntactic means to describe web services, but lack in providing a semantic underpinning. In order to harvest all the benefits of web services technology, a framework has been developed for deriving business semantics from syntactic descriptions of web services. The benefits of such a framework are two-fold. Firstly, the framework provides a way to gradually construct domain ontologies from previously defined technical services. Secondly, the framework enables the migration of syntactically defined web services toward semantic web services. The study follows a design research approach which (1) identifies the problem area and its relevance from an industrial case study and previous research, (2) develops the framework as a design artifact and (3) evaluates the application of the framework through a relevant scenario

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

Structured Review of Code Clone Literature

This report presents the results of a structured review of code clone literature. The aim of the review is to assemble a conceptual model of clone-related concepts which helps us to reason about clones. This conceptual model unifies clone concepts from a wide range of literature, so that findings about clones can be compared with each other

An ontological approach for recovering legacy business content

Legacy Information Systems (LIS) pose a challenge for many organizations. On one hand, LIS are viewed as aging systems needing replacement; on the other hand, years of accumulated business knowledge have made these systems mission-critical. Current approaches however are often criticized for being overtly dependent on technology and ignoring the business knowledge which resides within LIS. In this light, this paper proposes a means of capturing the business knowledge in a technology agnostic manner and transforming it in a way that reaps the benefits of clear semantic expression - this transformation is achieved via the careful use of ontology. The approach called Content Sophistication (CS) aims to provide a model of the business that more closely adheres to the semantics and relationships of objects existing in the real world. The approach is illustrated via an example taken from a case study concerning the renovation of a large financial system and the outcome of the approach results in technology agnostic models that show improvements along several dimensions