Software maintenance work is often considered a dauntingly rigid activity – this book proves the opposite: it demands high levels of creativity and thinking outside the box. Highlighting the creative aspects of software maintenance and combining analytical and systems thinking in a holistic manner, the book motivates readers not to blithely follow the beaten tracks of “technical rationality”. It delivers the content in a pragmatic fashion using case studies which are woven into long running story lines. The book is organized in four parts, which can be read in any order, except for the first chapter, which introduces software maintenance and evolution and presents a number of case studies of software failures. The “Introduction to Key Concepts” briefly introduces the major elements of software maintenance by highlighting various core concepts that are vital in order to see the forest for the trees. Each such concept is illustrated with a worked example. Next, the “Forward Engineering” part debunks the myth that being fast and successful during initial development is all that matters. To this end, two categories of forward engineering are considered: an inept initial project with a multitude of hard evolutionary phases and an effective initial project with multiple straightforward future increments. “Reengineering and Reverse Engineering” shows the difficulties of dealing with a typical legacy system, and tackles tasks such as retrofitting tests, documenting a system, restructuring a system to make it amenable for further improvements, etc. Lastly, the “DevOps” section focuses on the importance and benefits of crossing the development versus operation chasm and demonstrates how the DevOps paradigm can turn a loosely coupled design into a loosely deployable solution. The book is a valuable resource for readers familiar with the Java programming language, and with a basic understanding and/or experience of software construction and testing. Packed with examples for every elaborated concept, it offers complementary material for existing courses and is useful for students and professionals alike.

Software systems now invade every area of daily living. Yet, we still struggle to build systems we can really rely on. If we want to work with software systems at any level, we need to get to grips with the way software evolves. This book will equip the reader with a sound understanding of maintenance and how it affects all levels of the software evolution process.

With software maintenance costs averaging 50% of total computing costs, it is necessary to have an effective maintenance program in place. Aging legacy systems, for example, pose an especially rough challenge as veteran programmers retire and their successors are left to figure out how the systems operate. This book explores program analyzers, reve

Model-driven software development drastically alters the software development process, which is characterized by a high degree of innovation and productivity. Emerging Technologies for the Evolution and Maintenance of Software Models contains original academic work about current research and research projects related to all aspects affecting the maintenance, evolution, and reengineering (MER), as well as long-term management, of software models. The mission of this book is to present a comprehensive and central overview of new and emerging trends in software model research and to provide concrete results from ongoing developments in the field.

Software evolution and maintenance. Change management; Impact analysis. System release planning. Corrective maintenance. Adaptive maintenance. Perfective maintenance. Reengineering source code. Software testing. System release and configuration management. Implementing software evolution. Managing software Maintenance.

This open access book presents the outcomes of the “Design for Future – Managed Software Evolution” priority program 1593, which was launched by the German Research Foundation (“Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)”) to develop new approaches to software engineering with a specific focus on long-lived software systems. The different lifecycles of software and hardware platforms lead to interoperability problems in such systems. Instead of separating the development, adaptation and evolution of software and its platforms, as well as aspects like operation, monitoring and maintenance, they should all be integrated into one overarching process. Accordingly, the book is split into three major parts, the first of which includes an introduction to the nature of software evolution, followed by an overview of the specific challenges and a general introduction to the case studies used in the project. The second part of the book consists of the main chapters on knowledge carrying software, and cover tacit knowledge in software evolution, continuous design decision support, model-based round-trip engineering for software product lines, performance analysis strategies, maintaining security in software evolution, learning from evolution for evolution, and formal verification of evolutionary changes. In turn, the last part of the book presents key findings and spin-offs. The individual chapters there describe various case studies, along with their benefits, deliverables and the respective lessons learned. An overview of future research topics rounds out the coverage. The book was mainly written for scientific researchers and advanced professionals with an academic background. They will benefit from its comprehensive treatment of various topics related to problems that are now gaining in importance, given the higher costs for maintenance and evolution in comparison to the initial development, and the fact that today, most software is not developed from scratch, but as part of a continuum of former and future releases.

Software maintenance, the work done on a software system after it becomes operational, consumes at least half of all technical and management resources expended in the software area. This volume supplies an overview of software maintenance : what it is, how to do it, how to manage it, and trends in current research. The thirty-one papers included are frequently requested from their authors, from hard-to-find sources, cover the foundations of current thinking on this topic, and extend the frontiers of research.