1 / 19

Functional Paleontology: The Evolution of User-Visible System Services

This paper discusses the concept of functional paleontology and its implications for forward engineering in software systems. It explores the evolution of user-visible system services and presents a case study on telephony services. The results reveal general patterns of functional evolution, highlighting the benefits and burdens of system evolution over time. The paper proposes a conceptual framework for characterizing the evolution of system functionality and demonstrates its relevance for managing long-life software systems.

tpaiva
Download Presentation

Functional Paleontology: The Evolution of User-Visible System Services

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Functional Paleontology:The Evolution of User-Visible System Services Authors: Antón, A. I. and Potts, C. Presented by Shan Li CISC 864: Mining Software Engineering Data

  2. Outline • Discussion of the paper • Contributions of the paper • Purposes, examples, results, significance • The approach used in the paper • Personal Perspectives • Pleasant points in the paper • Unpleasant points in the paper • Conclusion & Questions

  3. Requirements Forward Engineering Reverse Engineering Designs Codes Before the Discussion Requirements

  4. What is needed to be known? • The balance between in forward engineering and reverse engineering is about the requirements which emphasized in forwarding engineering, while de-emphasized in reverse engineering.

  5. The Research Purpose To redress the balance To discuss the implication of general patterns of functional evolution for forward engineering To achieve the general patterns of functional evolution

  6. Research Methods • To restrict the study to the functionality evolution • To propose an approach: functional Paleontology • Paleontology: the study of the forms of life existing in prehistoric times, as represented by the fossils of plans, animals and other organisms • Analyzing fossil record of service evolution for a single system • Services: collections of functions related to purposes or mode of use

  7. Research Methods • To characterize evolution in systems, based on Shaw’s classification scheme for software engineering research

  8. Research Methods • To investigate into fossil record in an example • The telephony services available to domestic subscribers over a 50-year period • Specifically, services contained in the call guide of the Atlanta telephone directories for the years 1950-1999 • To study the profile of services benefits and burdens in a system’s evolution

  9. Research Methods • To develop a conceptual base • Functional morphology: • Overall profile of benefits and burdens exhibited by a system during its evolution • Benefits: system-use outcomes which meet a beneficiary’s goals • Burdens: which undermine these benefits • Functional evolution: • Vocabulary of Evolutionary types

  10. Research Results • The results of the telephony services evolution • Categories of Benefits • Categories of Burdens • Service Epochs and Expansions • Punctuated Evolution Pattern • Periodic Retrenchment • Functional Decentralization

  11. Research Results Benefits profile over 50 years From 1950-1999

  12. Research Results Burden profile over 50 years From 1950-1999

  13. Research Results • The evolution of telephony services suggests two general trends: • Benefits for the actor beneficiary precede benefits for others • Services initially benefits the people who actually perform tasks • Object-level benefits precede meta-level benefits • Object-level: the creation and transfer of information • Meta-level: how the system is manipulating information

  14. Research Results • Customization features may be relatively unimportant in most systems. Let’s put it other way, user customization may be significantly limited by the legacy of core design decisions • The approach is relevant to the management of long-life software systems.

  15. Future Research • Feasibility Questions • Is it possible to relate the functional morphology of the system in question to the software architecture? • Characterization Questions • Method Questions • Generalization Questions • Selection Questions

  16. Personal Perspective • Pleasant Points • The paper has excellent structure and describes their research method from the general level to case study level; and explains their discoveries from case study level to the general level • The paper defines every terms used. • The paper restricts the study into an aspect of a system • The paper discusses the disadvantages of the results based on the limited data

  17. Personal Perspective • Unpleasant Points • The paper borrows many terms from other disciplines, biology, engineering, linguistics. • Such as paleontology, morphology, langue.. • The paper does not emphasize the implication of the results for forward engineering of software engineering, which is one of the purpose of the paper.

  18. Conclusion • Contribution of the paper • Proposed a new methodology, generalized their approach by applied to most systems dominated by “dynamic information systems problem frame”. • The approach is therefore relevant to the management of long-life software systems • The research is not only for software systems, but also for others

  19. Thank You & Questions

More Related