Studying the process of software change: an analysis of software evolution

The paper describes the analysis and results of studies in software evolution. Four major applications have been studied, three of which are from the commercial sector. The study concentrates on analysing changes in data complexity, as a direct result of the maintenance processes through comparing versions of the same application. Reverse engineering techniques are employed as a means of analysing the changes to the software. The evolution of each application is then analysed and its evolutionary trends are scrutinised. The attributes of specific types of changes are then discussed, as are the results of the overall trend for each application. In addition, the maintenance policies employed for each of the applications are reviewed. Finally, based on the results of the evolution study, some recommendations are made with regard to good maintenance policy.