IEE Proceedings-Software

Special Issue on Unanticipated Software Evolution

Many studies of complex software systems have shown that more than 80% of the total cost of software development is devoted to software maintenance. This is mainly due to the need for software systems to evolve in the face of changing requirements. In some cases, software evolution may need to be dynamic, with changes being performed on running systems.

Despite the importance of software evolution, techniques and technologies that offer support for software evolution are far from ideal. In particular, unanticipated requirement changes are not well supported, although they account for most of the technical complications and related costs of evolving software.

By definition, unanticipated software evolution (USE) is not something for which we can prepare during the design of a software system. Therefore, support for such evolution in programming languages, and component models and related runtime infrastructures becomes a key issue. Without it, unanticipated changes often force software engineers to perform extensive invasive modification of existing designs and code.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together current research on different aspects for building large-scale software systems that are evolvable when faced with unanticipated requirements. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

·        USE support at different stages of a program’s life-cycle: compile-time, load-time and run-time.

·        USE support in programming languages, component models and related infrastructures (JVM, EJB, JavaBeans, CORBA, DCOM, and .NET).

·        USE support by prototype-based language concepts, reflection, and aspect-oriented approaches.

·        Consistency, safety, integrity, constraint enforcement and dependency management issues.

·        Learning from object-oriented databases: Application of techniques for schema evolution and instance adaptation for run-time USE.

·        Experience reports on engineering for 24x7 availability and on-line software upgrades.

·        Related descriptions of hard problems from a practitioner’s perspective.

·        Formal methods, language concepts and implementation techniques for USE.

Potential contributors may contact the guest editor to discuss the potential suitability of their contribution:

 

No limit is imposed on the length of submitted manuscripts. All submitted papers will be subject to the IEE Proceedings’ stringent refereeing procedures.  Further guidance for authors can be obtained at http://www.iee.org/Publish/Journals/Profjourn/Proc/sen/#Author_guide. First manuscripts should be submitted in PDF form to the editorial assistant, Mr Lee Baldwin, at lbaldwin@iee.org.uk and should be accompanied by a covering email stating clearly the title of the special issue to which they are submitted.

 

The deadline for the submission of first manuscripts is 3 February 2003.

 

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