Using code instrumentation for creating initial impact set for software change request

Change impact analysis is the challenging area for research because of its complexity and the fact that studying software change requests consumes the largest amount of time during software maintenance. This paper addresses the problem of creating initial impact set that will provide the basis for change impact analysis. The approach can be applied on software business applications that intensively use databases and have graphical user interface that reflects database structure. The approach to code instrumentation that enables tracking a user session on the visual forms level, and a model of initial impact set that is created based on the session trace and software architecture are presented in the paper. Real setting implementation provides the evidence that this approach could be used in the practice.