Software objects change: problems and solution

Abstract

The development of Software is a long term investment. This investment normally takes a lot of money and human efforts. So many things may change during the life span of a Software. The requirement and the specification upon which the need was based may change. The environment on which the Software was ported may also change. Because of this evolutionary trend in Software, there will be need to modify parts of the system in order to accommodate the change. This modification may lead to problems in the entire software system that may be very costly in terms of system consistency and quality. This problem is due to the fact that a change in a part of a system may affect other parts of the software system(propagation of change). Another reason that may lead to software objects change is the performance. Efficacy and viability are the two most important qualities that one will expect from a Software. This is demonstrated by the high cost of software maintenance. In fact, the existing data show that the cost of software maintenance is between 32% to 75% of the total cost of development. In order to address these problems we need a tool that will aid in analyzing the propagation and the impact of software objects change. In this paper we present a framework for the purpose of identifying the problem as well as a knowledge based model for impact analysis and propagation of a change. This model is not based on any programming language or design method. It can be applied on the basis of the problem at hand. It also takes into consideration the life cycle of a software.· In this model, we identify the dependencies between the various objects in the software. These dependencies are based on the domain specific view of the different components of the software. In order to validate our solution, we examine its application on the Ada programming language.