SE2 model to support software evolution

The paper proposes an integrated approach, namely SE², to support three core software maintenance and evolution tasks: feature location, software change impact analysis, and expert developer recommendation. The approach is centered on the combinations of the conceptual and evolutionary relationships latent in structured and unstructured software artifacts. Information Retrieval (IR) and Mining Software Repositories (MSR) based techniques are used for analyzing and deriving these relationships. All the three tasks are supported under a single, common framework by providing systematic combinations of MSR and IR analyses on single and multiple versions of a software system. This combining ability of SE² sets it apart from previously reported relevant solutions in the literature. The outlined empirical assessment is aimed at identifying the exclusive and synergistic improvements offered by such combinations for each of the addressed tasks. Preliminary evaluation on a number of open source systems suggests that such combinations do offer improvements over individual approaches.