Software Instability Analysis

CCR-0234603怀特黑德，埃米特·詹姆斯大学。来自加利福尼亚州。-Santa Cruz软件如今已紧密融入企业、政府和家庭的日常生活。该软件将维护多年，以适应不断变化的操作环境并添加新功能。越来越多的证据表明，软件的结构随着时间的推移而衰退，导致了一系列相关的问题：更改需要更长的时间才能实现，因为它们涉及更多的文件，模块边界变软，最近的大型更改是软件故障的良好预测。该项目旨在通过开发一种名为IVA(不稳定可视化和分析)的新工具来提高完善软件维护技术的有效性，该工具允许快速识别和排序不稳定的代码区，因此可以首先重新设计它们。不稳定区域的概念被引入为一组经常一起修改的相关软件片段，该项目使用分析和可视化技术来利用不稳定识别、分析和可视化来显示这些不稳定的位置和相对严重性。预计这一办法将大大减少查明不稳定区域并确定其优先次序所需的时间。该项目充分利用NASA的试验床来执行与验证IVA系统的正确性、可用性、可扩展性和性能相关的活动。此外，该项目将验证IVA本可以更早地识别最终被重构的代码区域。此外，IVA将纳入本科生和研究生的教学和研究。

CCR-0234603Whitehead, Emmet JamesUniv. of Calif. - Santa CruzSoftware today is tightly woven into the daily fabric of business, government, and homes. This software is maintained for many years to accommodate changing operational environments and to add new capabilities. An increasing body of evidence shows that the structure of software decays over time, leading to a cluster of related problems: changes take longer to implement since they touch more files, modular boundaries soften, and large recent changes are a good predictor of software faults.This project aims to improve the effectiveness of perfective software maintenance techniques by developing a novel tool called IVA (Instability Visualization and Analysis) that allows the rapid identification and ranking of unstable code regions, so they can be redesigned first. The concept of an instability region is introduced as a set of dependent software fragments that have been frequently modified together, and the project uses analysis and visualization techniques to show the locations and relative severity of these instabilities utilizing Instability Identification, Analysis, and Visualization. It is expected that this approach will dramatically reduce the time required to identify and prioritize instability regions. The project takes full advantage of the NASA testbed to perform activities related to validating the correctness, usability, scalability, and performance of the IVA system. Furthermore, the project will validate that IVA would have provided much earlier identification of code regions that were ultimately refactored. In addition, IVA will be incorporated in undergraduate and graduate teaching and research.