Decision-driven maintenance

This paper presents our approach to design recording which aims to facilitate the impact analysis of changes in data, functions, or the external environment. A whole software system is represented as a web which integrates the different work products of the software life cycle and their mutual relationships. A traceability relationship associates the objects with each other so that impact analysis can be performed. Internal traceability is provided by semantic links between software objects representing the work products of a development phase, while external traceability is assured by the cognitive links between software objects from different phases. System understanding is supported by the decisions which are involved in the transformation process. The history of these decisions is retained over time so that previous decisions can be examined for maintenance and reuse activities. The approach has been implemented through a Traceability Support System, a maintenance tool which combines the characteristics of program abstractors, project databases and design rationale capture tools. The approach and the tool also both support traceability in heterogeneous systems, which have subsystems implemented on different platforms. Finally, analysis is made of the results of an empirical investigation carried out to assess the approach.