Ontologies supporting the distributed software development: a systematic mapping study

  • Authors:

  • Alex Borges;Sérgio Soares;Silvio Meira;Hilário Tomaz;Rodrigo Rocha;Catarina Costa

  • Affiliations:

  • Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife -- PE, Brazil;Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife -- PE, Brazil;Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife -- PE, Brazil;Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife -- PE, Brazil;Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Recife -- PE, Brazil;Federal University of Acre, Rio Branco -- AC, Brazil

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Background: Along the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the adoption of the approaches based on Distributed Software Development (DSD). This approach has brought several competitive advantages, as well as new challenges such as communication and information sharing. In this context, the ontologies can provide benefits such as the definition, standardization and sharing of knowledge involved in the project, allowing a uniform understanding of information and facilitating the collaboration among distributed software development teams. Aim: Identifying evidence to determine which tools, models, techniques and best practices that use ontologies to support the DSD projects, and which ontologies proposed in this context. Method: This paper presents a systematic mapping study conducted in order to investigate how ontologies are being applied as a support to the DSD. The research protocol was based on Kitchenham's, and Travassos and Biolchini's guidelines. Searches were performed both in manual and automatic way in a set of digital libraries engines and leading conferences in the Software Engineering field. Results: From the initial set of 1588 studies, it was selected a total of 38 primary studies that answer the two research questions. Conclusions: This work presents evidences from each paper collected and an analysis of results reached. The results support the foundation for proposing and developing a feature based on ontologies to support the DSD, besides encouraging further researches that may promote advancements in this area and fostering the adoption of these types of resources by the global software industry.