Hypertext support for the information needs of software maintainers

  • Authors:

  • Jussi Koskinen;Airi Salminen;Jukka Paakki

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40351 Jyväskylä, Finland;Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40351 Jyväskylä, Finland;Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 26, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Making changes safely to programs requires program comprehension and satisfaction of the information needs of software maintainers. In this paper we provide insights into improving hypertext-based software maintenance support by analyzing those information needs. There exists a series of four earlier, detailed-level empirical studies on the information needs of professional C program maintainers. We focus on these studies, synthesize their results and determine sources from which the required information might be attained. An experimental research tool, the HyperSoft system, is used to demonstrate the satisfaction of information needs and the system is analytically evaluated against the needs explored by the empirical studies. HyperSoft is based on our transient hypertext approach for software maintenance support. HyperSoft provides automatically generated hypertextual access structures and software visualizations. The results show that transient hypertext is a well-suited representational form of the typically required versatile information. The discussion also covers related tools and the main features for providing the information required by maintainers are identified. The results show that the focus areas of these tools vary considerably.