Software Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners) [Paperback]

Robert Arnold (Author), Shawn Bohner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0818673842 | ISBN-13: 978-0818673849 | Edition: 1

As software systems become increasingly large and complex, the need increases to predict and control the effects of software changes. This book captures the latest information on the science and art of determining what software parts affect each other. It is a handy one-volume source of useful information about software change impact analysis techniques and technical results. The book frames the field, focuses attention, and tempers expectations.

The book provides a battery of ideas for doing impact analysis better. The reader will gain a healthy respect for the strengths and limitations of impact analysis technology and a solid background that will provide valuable for years to come. The book identifies key impact analysis definitions and themes and illustrates those themes through a collection of representative papers. It includes reports on software source code dependency analysis and software traceability analysis and proposes how results from both areas can more effectively support impact analysis in software engineering repositories. It also describes why impact representation and determination techniques are at the heart of both source dependency analysis and traceability analysis. The papers provide fundamental information of enduring value and were selected by how well they illustrate the important themes and how well they equip the reader with a solid understanding for tackling impact analysis problems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr; 1 edition (June 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0818673842
• ISBN-13: 978-0818673849
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,462,957 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Collected gems from body of knowledge, October 1, 2001

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Software Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners) (Paperback)

This collection of papers on software change impact analysis covers both practice and theory. The book starts with an introduction to change impact analysis. This intro covers terms, theories and practices that have emerged and are accepted among most researchers and practitioners, and provides a basic discussion of traceability and impact analysis.

Chapter 1 is titled Nature of Impact Analysis and contains A Process Model for Software Maintenance, Impact Analysis-Towards A Framework for Comparison, and The Year 2000 Problem: Impact, Strategies, and Tools. Although the last paper is obviously out of date, some of the techniques are worth examining, especially since a good amount of the Y2K problem required impact and risk analysis.

State of the Practice is the topic of chapter 2, and contains the following papers: An Analysis of the Requirements Traceability Problem, Software Change Impact Analysis for Design Evolution and Configuration Management Survey. These three papers are a combination of practice and theory.

The material in Chapter 3, Automated Support for Impact Analysis, is spotty. Some is out of date in my opinion, while other papers are as fresh today as when the book was published. Papers in this chapter are: The Integrated CASE Manifesto, A Practical Software Maintenance Environment, Intelligent Assistance for Software Development and Maintenance and Maintenance Support for Object-Oriented Programs (the last is excellent!). Chapter 4 contains the most practical material in the collection. The topic title is Dependency-Analysis Approaches, and the papers are: Using Dependence Analysis to Support the Software Maintenance Process, Interprocedural Slicing Using Dependence Graphs, Data Dependency Graphs for Ada Programs, Data Flow Analysis and its Application to Software Maintenance and Change Impact Identification in Object Oriented Software Maintenance.

Papers in Chapter 5 (Traceability Approaches) are also mostly practical, but many are out of date or contain information that was a good idea at the time, but seem quaint by today's standards. Paper topics are: A Hypertext System to Manage Software Life-Cycle Documents (very much ahead of its time, but woefully out of date now), A Software Documentation Support Environment-Its Definition, Traceability Based on Design Decisions (this is *must reading* in my opinion) and A Process for Consolidating and Reusing Design Knowledge. Chapter 6's papers address Impact Representation. While many were written a decade ago all of them are interesting and include ideas that are as valid today. Topics are: The Prism Model of Changes, A Unified Interprocedural Program Representation for a Maintenance Environment, A Formal Model of Program Dependencies and Its Implications for Software Testing, Debugging, and Maintenance and A Graph Model for Software Evolution.

Chapter 7 is devoted to Impact-Determination Techniques and contains interesting papers that are more theoretical than practical in my opinion. Topics are: An Early Impact Analysis Technique for Software Maintenance, Using Program Slicing in Software Maintenance, Efficient Algorithms for the Instantiated Transitive Closure Queries, and Approximate Reasoning About the Semantic Effects of Program Changes. Chapter 8 is a synopsis of material in the preceding chapters, with and commentary and observations about impact analysis as a discipline.

Overall, this book represents a substantial cross section of the body of knowledge devoted to software change impact analysis. Some strengths include the fact that this collection of papers makes the body of knowledge available in one book, and the focus of the papers on software engineering aspects of change and maintenance, and how to manage impact to complex applications. A key weakness is that some of the papers are over 10 years old. However, despite the age of some of the papers many are surprisingly applicable to maintenance challenges faced by practitioners today.

3.0 out of 5 stars Collection of selected papers., November 8, 2011

By 

Marcelo de Almeida Maia - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Software Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners) (Paperback)

It's a good start point. Don't expect to have a very well organized body of knowledge. It is just a selection of some important piece of work. Most of the papers are available in IEEE and ACM digital libraries.

5.0 out of 5 stars Thanks for a great book!, August 1, 2008

By 

Elad Schulman (Israel, Tel-Aviv) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Software Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners) (Paperback)

The book had arrived very quickly and in a great condition. I must say that i am very pleased with this puirchase.

Thanks,

EladSoftware Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners)