Adoption of reverse engineering tools: a cognitive perspective and methodology

Author

Zayour, Iyad ; Lethbridge, Timothy C.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Inf. Technol. & Eng., Ottawa Univ., Ont., Canada

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

245

Lastpage

255

Abstract

Reverse engineering tools aimed at facilitating software maintenance suffer from low adoption. Many are developed but few are used by software engineers in performing their maintenance work. We introduce an approach for tool design that is aimed at increasing the adoptability potential of tools. Our approach is based on applying cognitive analysis to identify cognitive overloads during software maintenance. A software solution is developed to target the cognitive difficulties in order to alleviate the overloads. The approach is described in the context of the implementation of a reverse engineering tool we call DynaSee. DynaSee is a tool that processes and visualises routine traces. We describe how DynaSee addresses a specific set of cognitive difficulties

Keywords

computer aided software engineering; human factors; program visualisation; psychology; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software tools; DynaSee; adoptability potential; cognitive analysis; cognitive difficulties; cognitive methodology; cognitive overloads; reverse engineering tools adoption; routine trace visualization; software engineering; software maintenance; software tool design; Costs; Information technology; Knowledge engineering; Reverse engineering; Samarium; Software maintenance; Software performance; Software systems; Software tools; Visualization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Program Comprehension, 2001. IWPC 2001. Proceedings. 9th International Workshop on

Conference_Location

Toronto, Ont.

ISSN

1092-8138

Print_ISBN

0-7695-1131-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WPC.2001.921735

Filename

921735