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An Experimental Evaluation of Documentation Methods and Reusability

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Book cover High Confidence Software Reuse in Large Systems (ICSR 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 5030))

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Abstract

This paper presents an experimental evaluation carried out in an academic environment. The goal of the experiment was to compare how different methods of documenting semantic information affect software reuse. More specifically, the goal was to measure if there were any differences between the methods with regard to the time needed to implement changes to existing software. Four methods of documentation were used; executable contracts, non-executable contracts, Javadoc-style documentation and sequence diagrams. The results indicate that executable contracts demanded more time than the other three methods and that sequence diagrams and Javadoc demanded the least time.

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Hong Mei

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Blom, M., Nordby, E.J., Brunstrom, A. (2008). An Experimental Evaluation of Documentation Methods and Reusability. In: Mei, H. (eds) High Confidence Software Reuse in Large Systems. ICSR 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5030. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68073-4_39

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68073-4_39

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68062-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68073-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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