IT3203 – Software Maintenance
IT3203:Fundamentals of Software
Engineering
Software Maintenance
Duration : 4 hours
UCSC-2007
IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Instructional Objectives
Describe the types of software maintenance
Describe the software maintenance process
Describe activities of configuration management
UCSC-2007
IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Detailed Syllabus
7.1. Evolving nature of software
7.1.1. Different types of maintenance
7.1.2. Re-engineering
7.2. Configuration Management (CM)
7.2.1. Importance of CM
7.2.2. Configuration items
7.2.3. Versioning
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
7.1. Evolving nature of software
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Lehman’s Laws
Law of Continuing Change
• A program that is used in a real-world environment necessarily must
change or become progressively less useful in that environment
• I.e. change is inevitable. Even during development, the requirements
change!
• Systems are tightly coupled with their environment. When a system is
installed in an environment , changes in the environment may leads to
changes in the system.
• Maintenance is unavoidable
BUT…Lehman’s Law of Increasing Complexity
• As an evolving program changes, its structure tends to become more
complex. Extra resources must be devoted to preserving and
simplifying the structure.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Reasons for changes
• Errors in the existing system - The performance or reliability of the
system may have to be improved.
• Changes in requirements-New requirements emerge when the software is
used.
• Technological advances - New computers and equipment is added to the
system.
• Legislation and other changes
• The change in the business environment
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Importance of evolution
A key problem for organisations is implementing and
managing change to their existing software systems.
Organizations have huge investments in their software systems
- they are critical business assets.
To maintain the value of these assets to the business, they must
be changed and updated.
The majority of the software budget in large companies is
devoted to evolving existing software rather than developing
new software.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Software maintenance
Modifying a program after it has been put into use.
Maintenance does not normally involve major changes to the
system’s architecture.
Changes are implemented by modifying existing components
and adding new components to the system.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Maintenance is inevitable
The system requirements are likely to change while the system is being
developed because the environment is changing. Therefore a delivered
system won't meet its requirements.
Systems are tightly coupled with their environment. When a system is
installed in an environment it changes that environment and therefore
changes the system requirements.
Systems MUST be maintained therefore if they are to remain useful in an
environment.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Types of maintenance
Corrective Maintenance
• to repair software faults. Changing a system to correct deficiencies in
the way meets its requirements.
Adaptive Maintenance
• Maintenance to add to or modify the system’s functionality
• Modifying the system to satisfy new requirements
• Modifying the system to suit new operation environment
Perfective Maintenance
• Modifying the system to satisfy new requirements.
• Improving programs performance, structure, reliability etc. Making
changes to avoid future problems or prepare for future changes
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Reasons for high Maintenance cost
• Program age and structure - The design and the programming practices used in developing
old systems may not be flexible, hence modifying existing systems may be difficult.
• Team Stability - After a system has been delivered, it is normal for the development team to
be broken up and people work on new projects. The new team responsible for the maintenance
of the system may not understand the design decisions and hence lot of effort during the
maintenance process is taken up with understanding the existing system.
• Contractual responsibility – The maintenance contract may be given to a difference company
rather than the original system developer. This factor along with the lack of team stability,
means that there is no incentive for a development team to write the software so that it is easy to
change.
• Staff skills - Maintenance is seen as a less skilled process than system development and is
often allocated to junior staff members. Programming languages and techniques used in old
systems may be obsolete, hence new staff members may not like to learn these languages and
techniques.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
An overview of the maintenance process
Change Impact Release Change System
request analysis planning implementation release
Fault Platform System
repair adaptation enhancement
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Software Re-engineering
What? - Re-structuring or re-writing part or all of an existing system without changing its
functionality
When?
• When some but not all sub-systems of a larger system require frequent maintenance
• When hardware or software support becomes obsolete
How?
• The system may be re-structured and re-documented to make it easier to maintain
Why?
• Reduced risk
» New software development carries high risk.
• Reduced cost
» The cost of re-engineering is often significantly less than the costs of
developing new software
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Advantages of re-engineering
Reduced risk
• There is a high risk in new software development. There may be
development problems, staffing problems and specification problems.
Reduced cost
• The cost of re-engineering is often significantly less than the costs of
developing new software.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Forward engineering and re-engineering
System Design and New
specification implementation system
Forward engineering
Existing Understanding and Re-engineered
software system transformation system
Software re-engineering
Automated program conversion
Automated program restructuring cost
Manual Program and Data Restructuring
Restructuring plus Architectural Changes
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
The re-engineering process
Original Program Modularised Original
program documentation program data
Reverse
engineering
Program Data
Source code
modularisation Re-engineering
translation
Program
structure
Structure Re-engineered
improvement
program data
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Re-engineering activities
Source code translation- The program is converted from an old programming
language to a more modern version of the same language or to different language.
Reverse engineering - The program is analysed and information extracted from it
which help to document its organisation and functionality.
Program structure improvement – The control structure of the program is
analysed and modified to make it easier to read and understand.
Program modularisation – Related parts of the program are grouped together and,
where appropriate, redundancy is removed. In some cases this stage may involve
architectural transformation.
Data re-engineering – The data processed by the program is changed to reflect
program changes.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
7.2. Configuration Management (CM)
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Configuration management
CM is the development and application of standards and
procedures for managing an evolving software product.
You need to manage evolving systems because, as they evolve,
many different versions of the software are created.
These versions incorporate proposals for change, corrections of
faults and adaptations for different hardware and operating
systems.
There may be several versions under development and in use
at the same time. You need to keep track of these changes that
have been implemented and how these changes have been
included in the software.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Configuration Management contd.
All products of the software process may have to be managed
•Specifications
•Designs
•Programs
•Test data
•User manuals
Thousands of separate documents are generated for a large software system
CM Plan
A CM plan described the standards and procedures which should be used for
configuration management. The starting point for developing the plan should be a
set of general, company-wide CM standards and these should be adapted as
necessary for each specific project
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
The contents of a CM plan
1. The definitions of what entities are to be managed and a formal scheme for
identifying these entities.
2. A statement of who takes responsibility for the CM procedures and for
submitting controlled entities to the CM team.
3. The CM policies that are used for change control and version management.
4. A description of the records of the CM process which should be maintained.
5. A description of the tools to be used for CM and the process to be applied
when using these tools.
6. A definition of the configuration database which should used to record
configuration information.
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
The configuration database
All CM information should be maintained in a configuration
database
allow queries
• Who has a particular system version?
• What platform is required for a particular version?
• What versions are affected by a change to component X?
• How many reported faults in version T?
The CM database should preferably be linked to the software
being managed
• When a programmer downloads a program it is ‘booked’ out to
him/her
• Could be linked to a CASE tool
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
The change management process
Request change by completing a change request form
Analyze change request
if change is valid then
Assess how change might be implemented
Assess change cost
Submit request to change control board
if change is accepted then
repeat
make changes to software
submit changed software for quality approval
until software quality is adequate
create new system version
else
reject change request
else
reject change request
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Change request form
Change Request Form
Project: Proteus/PCL-Tools Number: 23/94
Change requester: I. Sommerville Date: 1/12/98
Requested change: When a component is selected from the structure,
display the name of the file where it is stored.
Change analyser: G. Dean Analysis date: 10/12/98
Components affected: Display-Icon.Select, Display-Icon.Display
Associated components: FileTable
Change assessment: Relatively simple to implement as a file name table
is available. Requires the design and implementation of a display field. No
changes to associated components are required.
Change priority: Low
Change implementation:
Estimated effort: 0.5 days
Date to CCB: 15/12/98 CCB decision date: 1/2/99
CCB decision: Accept change. Change to be implemented in Release 2.1.
Change implementor: Date of change:
Date submitted to QA: QA decision:
Date submitted to CM:
Comments
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Derivation history
Record of changes applied to a document or
code component
Should record, in outline, the change made, the rationale for the
change, who made the change and when it was implemented
May be included as a comment in code. If a standard prologue
style is used for the derivation history, tools can process this
automatically
//
// Modification history
// Version Modifier Date Change Reason
// 1.0 J. Jones 1/12/1998 Add header Submitted to CM
// 1.1 G. Dean 9/4/1999 New field Change req. R07/99
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IT3203 – Software Maintenance
Versions/variants/releases
Version - An instance of a system which is functionally
distinct in some way from other system instances
Variant - An instance of a system which is functionally
identical but non-functionally distinct from other instances of a
system
Release - An instance of a system which is distributed to users
outside of the development team
Version Numbering
• Simple naming scheme uses a linear derivation
e.g. V1, V1.1, V1.2, V2.1, V2.2 etc.
• Better way is Attribute Naming
» Examples of attributes are Date, Creator, Programming Language,
Customer, Status etc
» AC3D (language =Java, platform = NT4, date = Jan 1999)
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