Showing papers by "Malcolm Munro published in 1998"

Visualising software in virtual reality

Abstract: Software visualisations of one form or another appear in numerous software maintenance tools. Visualisation is arguably one of the most profitable means of communicating information to a user. As software systems become larger and more complex we find ourselves in greater need for techniques to visualise such large information structures. This paper concentrates on visualising software systems using 3D graphics and VR technology. The main concepts of 3D software visualisation are introduced as well as a set of desirable properties which act as both guidelines for designing a visualisation and also as a framework for evaluating existing visualisations. A prototype visualisation, FileVis, is described and evaluated against these desirable properties.

An integrated environment for reuse reengineering C code

Abstract: The paper presents an integrated environment implemented in Prolog for reuse reengineering existing C systems. Different tools developed in the RE2 project are integrated in the environment through sharing a fine-grained representation for C programs, the Combined C Graph (CCG). Different views of a system can be abstracted and visualised from the data-base of Prolog facts implementing its CCG representation. Software metric tools evaluate the reengineering costs, while reengineering operations are expressed as transformation rules and a symbolic executor allows the production of the reusable module's specification.

Investigating component-based maintenance and the effect of software evolution: a reengineering approach using data clustering

Abstract: As software applications increase in size, grouping the application into smaller, more manageable components is often proposed as a means of assisting software maintenance activities. This paper investigates the suitability of components generated using data clustering techniques. The suitability of the approach is based on real case studies from a commercial environment. Successive versions of the software application are used to investigate how the software applications change throughout the maintenance process. Within this paper, the change process as a whole is referred to as the process of software evolution. This paper provides an indication of how applications evolve over time and how clustering techniques are affected by the evolution process.

Assisting human understanding to aid the targeting of necessary reengineering work

Abstract: Reengineering is a necessary but expensive process. Therefore if ways of reducing the cost of reengineering can be found, then this can help to direct limited budgets to where they are most needed. This paper evaluates a number of ways in which early predictions of the benefits of performing reengineering work can be made. The early predictions estimate whether potential reuse candidates can be obtained from the reengineering process. In particular, this paper is concerned with evaluating approaches to predict the numbers of potential reuse candidates which are available within legacy applications. A number of differing approaches are proposed, each is evaluated. These evaluations range from fully automatic to fully manual tasks. The accuracy of each approach is tested against the results of the application of the full reuse reengineering method. The method used is the IDENT method. The IDENT method is a reuse reengineering approach for the identification and extraction of reuse candidates from existing COBOL legacy systems. An overview of the method is provided within this paper. By comparison of the two sets of results, the accuracy of the early estimation techniques are obtained.

Reengineering support for software evolution: an evaluation through case study

Abstract: The paper evaluates the suitability of reuse candidates identified through the dominance relation approach and their ability to support the process of software evolution. The paper provides an overview of the dominance relation and how it is used to identify the reusable candidates. The reuse candidates that are identified by this approach are then evaluated to see how they stand up to the process of software evolution. A number of case studies, and the results of the object's evolution, are described.

Software Configuration Management for a Reusable Software Library within a Software Maintenance Environment

Abstract: Software Configuration Management and software reuse are now generally considered to be important technologies in software engineering Both have been proposed for making a significant improvement in productivity and quality However, these two technologies have been investigated separately In order to make Software Configuration Management and reuse more effective, both approaches require to be introduced into a development or maintenance environment together The authors have developed a process model for Maintenance with Reuse (MwR) to support Software Configuration Management for a reuse library within a maintenance environment As software reuse and Software Configuration Management as well as software reuse and software maintenance have many similarities in their activities, and these areas can therefore be integrated within a software maintenance environment An integrated approach to the common areas of these different activities will greatly contribute to the productivity and quality of software This paper will address an integrated approach that can overcome some of the barriers that exist in software maintenance and reuse A process model of an integrated approach has been created and validated using Process Weaver In order for the reuse library to allow accesses from many potential reusers, the process model has been implemented on the WWW The paper describes an integrated process model and its prototype to support change and version control for evolution of software components within both a reuse library and a legacy system

Applying a Domain Specific Language Approach to Component Oriented Programming

Abstract: A number of methods have been suggested to deal with component specification (e.g. Buichi and Sekerinski [1]), re-use (e.g Lalanda [2]) and fault-management (e.g Baggiolini and Harms [3]). At Durham we propose the use of a Domain Oriented method in order to specify the semantic and syntactic properties of components, to provide a framework in which to re-use and re-configure the components and to provide additional optimisation and fault-tolerant behaviour.