2004 IRISH SCIENTIST YEAR BOOK

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Limerick Institute of Technology
Tara Kelly
Content Analysis: a means for characterising information seeking during software maintenance

Software comprehension studies are concerned with how programmers can understand large programs, and how it is possible to make changes to the code without having to go through every line of the program individually. This research intends to explore the area of software comprehension and, specifically, to identify how programmers use the software tools they have available to them to achieve software comprehension during realistic software/maintenance tasks.

This research wishes to evaluate these different ways that a large system can be represented to a programmer in order to determine the information types that are reasoned about, and detected by programmers when viewing or interacting with these representations. The framework for this work will initially be the 'information types' taxonomy of Pennington, which has been extended in recent years. The information types framework will be used with a technique called content analysis to analyse talk-aloud data gathered as programmers try to comprehend systems, while studying different software representations. Thus, it will try to identify relationships between the representations studied by programmers during software maintenance tasks, and the information they reason about. The main objectives for this study are:

  • Adapting the information types schema in order to apply it to external representations of maintenance tasks.

  • Mapping from representations to information types that are portrayed with high confidence/correctness/specifics.

  • A secondary aim would be to perform a preliminary analysis of the mapping from software maintenance tasks to information requirements.

If this information can be mapped to the information sought by programmers, in specific maintenance contexts, then this could provide valuable insights into the relevance of these tools.

Contact: Tara Kelly. Department of I.T., Limerick Institute of Technology, Moylish Park, Limerick;
Tel: 061 208208; E-Mail: [email protected]