Assisting an Experimental Reengineering of Excel with Reflexion Models
Gail C. Murphy and David Notkin
Technical Report UW-CSE-96-07-01, Department of Computer Science
and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle WA.
Postscript version]>
Abstract
To perform most software engineering tasks on an existing system
effectively, a software engineer needs to have some understanding of
the system's source. It is often difficult for an engineer to gain
this understanding because the systems are large and complex and
because the tasks must be performed under fixed time and cost
constraints. We developed the
software reflexion model technique
to help an engineer faced with this challenge. In essence, this
technique allows an engineer to use a task-specific, high-level model
as a lens through which to view the source for a system. The technique
is lightweight and iterative, allowing the engineer to balance the
cost of applying the technique with the benefits of the information
acquired.
A software engineer at Microsoft Corporation applied this technique
to aid with an experimental reengineering of the Excel product, which
comprises about 1.2 million lines of C code. Using the technique,
the Microsoft engineer was able to assess and plan the task more
rapidly and with more confidence than promised by conventional
techniques. This paper presents the case study, describing the
feasibility of our technique to handle scale, and providing insights
into the kinds of source information useful to an engineer
working on a large reengineering task in an industrial environment.
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Last modified: June 28, 1996
Gail Murphy
murphy@cs.ubc.ca