A formal model for software evolution

Proposes a formal model with mathematical definitions to represent and explore the complicated hierarchy and multidimensional structure of software evolution. This formalization of software evolution is based on a hypergraph and extended to an evolutionary hypergraph with different software evolution objects. In an evolutionary hypergraph, a top-level software evolution step can be refined into several finer software evolution steps and related top-level software evolution components can be decomposed into finer software evolution components. The hypergraph model, in conjunction with prototyping, can help developers describe and understand software evolution processes. We provide an example of multimedia system evolution to illustrate this formalization.