Software Evolution

Provides students and engineers with the fundamental developments and common practices of software evolution and maintenance Software Evolution and Maintenance: A Practitioner’s Approach introduces readers to a set of well-rounded educational materials, covering the fundamental developments in software evolution and common maintenance practices in the industry. Each chapter gives a clear understanding of a particular topic in software evolution, and discusses the main ideas with detailed examples. The authors first explain the basic concepts and then drill deeper into the important aspects of software evolution. While designed as a text in an undergraduate course in software evolution and maintenance, the book is also a great resource forsoftware engineers, information technology professionals, and graduate students in software engineering. Based on the IEEE SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body of Knowledge) Explains two maintenance standards: IEEE/EIA 1219 and ISO/IEC14764 Discusses several commercial reverse and domain engineering toolkits Slides for instructors are available online Software Evolution and Maintenance: A Practitioner’s Approach equips readers with a solid understanding of the laws of software engineering, evolution and maintenance models, reengineering techniques, legacy information systems, impact analysis, refactoring, program comprehension, and reuse.

This open access book presents the outcomes of the “Design for Future – Managed Software Evolution” priority program 1593, which was launched by the German Research Foundation (“Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)”) to develop new approaches to software engineering with a specific focus on long-lived software systems. The different lifecycles of software and hardware platforms lead to interoperability problems in such systems. Instead of separating the development, adaptation and evolution of software and its platforms, as well as aspects like operation, monitoring and maintenance, they should all be integrated into one overarching process. Accordingly, the book is split into three major parts, the first of which includes an introduction to the nature of software evolution, followed by an overview of the specific challenges and a general introduction to the case studies used in the project. The second part of the book consists of the main chapters on knowledge carrying software, and cover tacit knowledge in software evolution, continuous design decision support, model-based round-trip engineering for software product lines, performance analysis strategies, maintaining security in software evolution, learning from evolution for evolution, and formal verification of evolutionary changes. In turn, the last part of the book presents key findings and spin-offs. The individual chapters there describe various case studies, along with their benefits, deliverables and the respective lessons learned. An overview of future research topics rounds out the coverage. The book was mainly written for scientific researchers and advanced professionals with an academic background. They will benefit from its comprehensive treatment of various topics related to problems that are now gaining in importance, given the higher costs for maintenance and evolution in comparison to the initial development, and the fact that today, most software is not developed from scratch, but as part of a continuum of former and future releases.

This book focuses on novel trends in software evolution research and its relations with other emerging disciplines. Mens and Demeyer, both authorities in the field of software evolution, do not restrict themselves to the evolution of source code but also address the evolution of other, equally important software artifacts. This book is the indispensable source for researchers and professionals looking for an introduction and comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art.

Evolution of software has long been recognized as one of the most problematic and challenging areas in the field of software engineering, as evidenced by the high, often up to 60-80%, life-cycle costs attributed to this activity over the life of a software system. Studies of software evolution are central to the understanding and practice of software development. Yet it has received relatively little attention in the field of software engineering. This book focuses on topics aimed at giving a scientific insight into the aspect of software evolution and feedback. In summary, the book covers conceptual, phenomenological, empirical, technological and theoretical aspects of the field of software evolution - with contributions from the leading experts. This book delivers an up-to-date scientific understanding of what software evolution is, to show why it is inevitable for real world applications, and it demonstrates the role of feedback in software development and maintenance. The book also addresses some of the phenomenological and technological underpinnings and includes rules and guidelines for increased software evolvability and, in general, sustainability of the evolution process. Software Evolution and Feedback provides a long overdue, scientific focus on software evolution and the role of feedback in the software process, making this the indispensable guide for all software practitioners, researchers and managers in the software industry.

Provides students and engineers with the fundamentaldevelopments and common practices of software evolution andmaintenance Software Evolution and Maintenance: A Practitioner’sApproach introduces readers to a set of well-roundededucational materials, covering the fundamental developments insoftware evolution and common maintenance practices in theindustry. Each chapter gives a clear understanding of a particulartopic in software evolution, and discusses the main ideas withdetailed examples. The authors first explain the basic concepts andthen drill deeper into the important aspects of software evolution.While designed as a text in an undergraduate course in softwareevolution and maintenance, the book is also a great resourceforsoftware engineers, information technology professionals, andgraduate students in software engineering. Based on the IEEE SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body ofKnowledge) Explains two maintenance standards: IEEE/EIA 1219 andISO/IEC14764 Discusses several commercial reverse and domain engineeringtoolkits Slides for instructors are available online Software Evolution and Maintenance: APractitioner’s Approach equips readers with a solidunderstanding of the laws of software engineering, evolution andmaintenance models, reengineering techniques, legacy informationsystems, impact analysis, refactoring, program comprehension, andreuse.

This title provides a forum where expert insights are presented on the subject of linking three current phenomena: software evolution, UML and XML.

lfimplementing systematic reuse is risky, not doing it is even more risky. Trying systematic reuse unsuccessfully can cost precious time and resources and may make management sceptical of trying it again. But if your competitors do it successfully and you do not, you may lose market share and possibly an entire market. W. B. Frakes and S. Isoda, 1994 Software companies today are faced with new and more challenging market pressures. In response to this challenge, they have to reduce the time-to-market with new or enhanced products, increase the diversity of products available to the customers, and enhance the standardisation and interoperability of the products. At the same time, many companies carry the burden of large legacy systems, that have become too expensive to maintain and cannot sustain the demands of the marketing department for alterations, leading to business opportunities being lost [BEN95]. However the systems are very valuable and cannot be simply replaced because of the costs that such an operation entails. Simply replacing them may be too expensive because of the huge volumes of on-line data that must be converted, among other reasons.