Software engineering and scale-free networks

Authors:
Lian Wen;R. Geoff Dromey;Diana Kirk
Affiliations:
Software Quality Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Qld., Australia;Software Quality Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Qld., Australia;Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Venue:
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics - Special issue on cybernetics and cognitive informatics
Year:
2009

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Abstract

Complex-network theory is a new approach in studying different types of large systems in both the physical and the abstract worlds. In this paper, we have studied two kinds of network from software engineering: the component dependence network and the sorting comparison network (SCN). It is found that they both show the same scale-free property under certain conditions as complex networks in other fields. These results suggest that complex-network theory can be a useful approach to the study of software systems. The special properties of SCNs provide a more repeatable and deterministic way to study the evolution and optimization of complex networks. They also suggest that the closer a sorting algorithm is to the theoretical optimal limit, the more its SCN is like a scale-free network. This may also indicate that, to store and retrieve information efficiently, a concept network might need to be scale-free.