Hypertext support for the information needs of software maintainers

Abstract

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 needs explored by the empirical studies. HyperSoft is based on our transient hypertext approach for software maintenance support. HyperSoft provides automatically generated hypertextual access structures and software visualizations. The results show that transient hypertext is a well‐suited representational form of the typically required versatile information. The discussion also covers related tools and the main features for providing the information required by maintainers are identified. The results show that the focus areas of these tools vary considerably. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Automated software license analysis

“…In most cases the extraction is achieved by calling up a parser component which is implemented according to the well-established conventions of compiler construction (Aho et al 1986). Five-level classification of the information retrieval features of reverse engineering tools is provided by Koskinen et al (2004). In the present paper, this classification will be used to organize the discussion of information needs and reverse engineering features (see Table 2).…”

“…Many reverse engineering tools, such as those listed in Koskinen et al (2004), have been designed to alleviate the typical comprehension problems of maintaining large software systems. Most of the tools focus on meeting the needs of programs written in C (and partly C++) (Bellay and Gall 1998).…”

“…Maintenance is especially difficult if documentation is inadequate or misleading. In solving maintenance problems, the maintainers constantly need relevant pieces of information, related to information needs (Koskinen et al 2004) that will be characterized in more detail in Sect. 2.3.…”

“…It does not involve changing the subject system: it is a process of examination (Cross et al 1992). Reverse engineering is the main automated approach for satisfying the information needs of maintainers (Koskinen et al 2004). Part of the information needed by maintainers can be retrieved via automated analysis.…”

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

“…The seminars have in part been organized in relation to our ealier research projects, namely: Hyper-Soft (Hypertextual Software Maintenance), which is described e.g. in [168,169], and ELTIS (Extending the LifeTime of Information Systems) [170,171]. The archived and published seminar reports contribute to the long-term improvement of the science-based teaching of SME within FIT.…”