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Computing (2012) 94:857885
DOI 10.1007/s00607-012-0204-1
Received: 22 February 2012 / Accepted: 27 June 2012 / Published online: 14 July 2012 Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract The Semantic Web provides a standardized, well-established framework to dene and work with ontologies. It is especially apt for machine processing. However, researchers in the eld of software evolution have not really taken advantage of that so far. In this paper, we address the potential of representing software evolution knowledge with ontologies and Semantic Web technology, such as Linked Data and automated reasoning. We present Seon, a pyramid of ontologies for software evolution, which describes stakeholders, their activities, artifacts they create, and the relations among all of them. We show the use of evolution-specic ontologies for establishing a shared taxonomy of software analysis services, for dening extensible meta-models, for explicitly describing relationships among artifacts, and for linking data such as code structures, issues (change requests), bugs, and basically any changes made to a system over time. For validation, we discuss three different approaches, which are backed by Seon and enable semantically enriched software evolution analysis.
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation as part of the ProDoc Enterprise Computing (PDFMP2-122969) and the Systems of Systems Analysis (200020_132175) projects.
M. Wrsch (B) G. Ghezzi M. Hert G. Reif H. C. Gall
Department of Informatics, University of Zurich,
Binzmhlestrasse 14, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]
G. Ghezzie-mail: [email protected]
M. Herte-mail: [email protected]
G. Reife-mail: [email protected]
H. C. Galle-mail: [email protected]
SEON: a pyramid of ontologies for software evolution and its applications
Michael Wrsch Giacomo Ghezzi
Matthias Hert Gerald Reif Harald C. Gall
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858 M. Wrsch et al.
These techniques have been fully implemented as tools and cover software analysis with web services, a natural language query interface for developers, and large-scale software visualization.
Keywords Software evolution Semantic Web Ontologies
Mathematics Subject Classication 68U01 68U35
1 Introduction
Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power. For millennia this maxim has been valid, and will likely remain so in the futureeven in an age of information overload, where the entire humankind produces roughly two zettabytes data a year.1
This also holds for the domain of software engineering, where even small development teams accumulate gigabytes of interdependent artifacts over the years. They are stored in software repositories,...