Information hiding, knowledge clustering approach to software maintenance

Program design and system documentation are two factors that would determine the ease of the software maintenance process. There is much emphasis on the need to produce a complete system documentation to alleviate the problems faced in maintaining the software. Emphasis is also stressed on the importance of properly carrying out the tasks of systems analysis and design, and even program design during the development phase. However, little emphasis is stressed on program design in the software maintenance phase. The reasons could partially contribute to ignorance where believing software could be maintained by simply inserting new codes in the existing programs. The other reason could be due to the difficulty in designing and integrating new programs into the existing programs that would function seamlessly. Instead of finding other alternatives for solutions, this paper addresses the problems of software maintenance from the fundamental. The role of program design played in the maintenance phase is re-looked for solutions. A new approach to software maintenance that incorporates the concept of information hiding, knowledge clustering is evolved