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Determinants of program repair maintenance requirements

Author:

Lee L. GremillionAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 27, Issue 8

Pages 826 - 832

https://doi.org/10.1145/358198.358228

Published: 01 August 1984 Publication History

Abstract

Considerable resources are devoted to the maintenance of programs including that required to correct errors not discovered until after the programs are delivered to the user. A number of factors are believed to affect the occurrence of these errors, e.g., the complexity of the programs, the intensity with which programs are used, and the programming style. Several hundred programs making up a manufacturing support system are analyzed to study the relationships between the number of delivered errors and measures of the programs' size and complexity (particularly as measured by software science metrics), frequency of use, and age. Not surprisingly, program size is found to be the best predictor of repair maintenance requirements. Repair maintenance is more highly correlated with the number of lines of source code in the program than it is to software science metrics, which is surprising in light of previously reported results. Actual error rate is found to be much higher than that which would be predicted from program characteristics.

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Broxton MFlynn JOverbeck RErickson DHedman PDuvall MDourgarian JBusch JWhalen MDebevec P(2020)Immersive light field video with a layered mesh representationACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339248539:4(86:1-86:15)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
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Han SLiu BCabezas RTwigg CZhang PPetkau JYu TTai CAkbay MWang ZNitzan ADong GYe YTao LWan CWang R(2020)MEgATrackACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339245239:4(87:1-87:13)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
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Hornus SKuipers TDevillers OTeillaud MMartínez JGlisse MLazard SLefebvre S(2020)Variable-width contouring for additive manufacturingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339244839:4(131:1-131:17)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
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Index Terms

Determinants of program repair maintenance requirements
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management

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Reviews

Reviewer: Agnes Marguerite Decroix

The author presents his reflection on the number of delivered bugs in a software package out of a particular study he made (346 programs written in PL/1). The relation of number of buys with program size and complexity, usage and age, and code style is reviewed. The discrepancy between predicted and actual results leads to a few thoughts about the choice of data to be captured in a given context. This paper offers its contribution to the well-known questions: “How much bug is delivered__?__” and “What is the maintenance cost__?__” A suggestion for further studies is sketched since the results are unsatisfactory using actual methods. But not attempt is made to find out which of the parameters are misleading in one's computation.

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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 27, Issue 8

Aug 1984

90 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/358198

Editor:
Peter J. Denning
NASA Ames Research, Moffett Field, CA

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1984 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 August 1984

Published in CACM Volume 27, Issue 8

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Broxton MFlynn JOverbeck RErickson DHedman PDuvall MDourgarian JBusch JWhalen MDebevec P(2020)Immersive light field video with a layered mesh representationACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339248539:4(86:1-86:15)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392485
Han SLiu BCabezas RTwigg CZhang PPetkau JYu TTai CAkbay MWang ZNitzan ADong GYe YTao LWan CWang R(2020)MEgATrackACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339245239:4(87:1-87:13)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392452
Hornus SKuipers TDevillers OTeillaud MMartínez JGlisse MLazard SLefebvre S(2020)Variable-width contouring for additive manufacturingACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339244839:4(131:1-131:17)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392448
Jiang CWang CRist FWallner JPottmann H(2020)Quad-mesh based isometric mappings and developable surfacesACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/3386569.339243039:4(128:1-128:13)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386569.3392430
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Colazo J(2015)The interplay among software volatility, complexity and development outcomesInternational Journal of Information Technology and Management10.1504/IJITM.2015.06846214:2/3(160-171)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2015
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Bender MFineman JGilbert STarjan R(2015)A New Approach to Incremental Cycle Detection and Related ProblemsACM Transactions on Algorithms10.1145/275655312:2(1-22)Online publication date: 8-Dec-2015
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COLAZO J(2014)STRUCTURAL CHANGES ASSOCIATED WITH TEMPORAL DISPERSION IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS: EVIDENCE FROM OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECT TEAMSInternational Journal of Innovation Management10.1142/S136391961450030318:05(1450030)Online publication date: Oct-2014
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