Improving software comprehension through an automated dependency tracer

The paper presents ANALYST, a tool that automates impact analysis by exploiting a framework that implements dependency based software representation models. The preliminary experimental results show that it supports the improvement of software representation models to be used in software comprehension. Moreover, the tool allows the maintainer to perform more accurate and correct changes, decreasing the software degradation effect. Finally, it is shown that the tool can be used as a general platform for experimenting with different impact analysis approaches, and for assessing and comparing their effectiveness with the use of suitable metrics