CS-6209 Software Engineering 1

1
Week 13: Software Maintenance

Module 010: Software Maintenance

Course Learning Outcomes:

1. Assess the impact of a change request to an existing product of medium
size.
2. Describe techniques, coding idioms and other mechanisms for
implementing designs that are more maintainable.
3. Refactor an existing software implementation to improve some aspect of
its design.
4. Identify the principal issues associated with software evolution and
explain their impact on the software lifecycle.'
5. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different types of software
reuse.

Introduction
Software maintenance is widely accepted part of SDLC now a days. It stands for all
the modifications and updations done after the delivery of software product. There
are number of reasons, why modifications are required, some of them are briefly
mentioned below:
 Market Conditions - Policies, which changes over the time, such as taxation
and newly introduced constraints like, how to maintain bookkeeping, may
trigger need for modification.
 Client Requirements - Over the time, customer may ask for new features or
functions in the software.
 Host Modifications - If any of the hardware and/or platform (such as
operating system) of the target host changes, software changes are needed to
keep adaptability.
 Organization Changes - If there is any business level change at client end,
such as reduction of organization strength, acquiring another company,
organization venturing into new business, need to modify in the original
software may arise.

Types of maintenance
In a software lifetime, type of maintenance may vary based on its nature. It may be
just a routine maintenance tasks as some bug discovered by some user or it may be
a large event in itself based on maintenance size or nature. Following are some
types of maintenance based on their characteristics:

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
2
Week 13: Software Maintenance

 Corrective Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations done

in order to correct or fix problems, which are either discovered by user or
concluded by user error reports.
 Adaptive Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations applied
to keep the software product up-to date and tuned to the ever changing
world of technology and business environment.
 Perfective Maintenance - This includes modifications and updates done in
order to keep the software usable over long period of time. It includes new
features, new user requirements for refining the software and improve its
reliability and performance.
 Preventive Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations to
prevent future problems of the software. It aims to attend problems, which
are not significant at this moment but may cause serious issues in future.

Cost of Maintenance
Reports suggest that the cost of maintenance is high. A study on estimating software
maintenance found that the cost of maintenance is as high as 67% of the cost of
entire software process cycle.

On an average, the cost of software maintenance is more than 50% of all SDLC
phases. There are various factors, which trigger maintenance cost go high, such as:

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
3
Week 13: Software Maintenance

Real-world factors affecting Maintenance Cost

 The standard age of any software is considered up to 10 to 15 years.
 Older softwares, which were meant to work on slow machines with less
memory and storage capacity cannot keep themselves challenging against
newly coming enhanced softwares on modern hardware.
 As technology advances, it becomes costly to maintain old software.
 Most maintenance engineers are newbie and use trial and error method to
rectify problem.
 Often, changes made can easily hurt the original structure of the software,
making it hard for any subsequent changes.
 Changes are often left undocumented which may cause more conflicts in
future.

Software-end factors affecting Maintenance Cost

 Structure of Software Program
 Programming Language
 Dependence on external environment
 Staff reliability and availability

Maintenance Activities
IEEE provides a framework for sequential maintenance process activities. It can be
used in iterative manner and can be extended so that customized items and
processes can be included.

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
4
Week 13: Software Maintenance

These activities go hand-in-hand with each of the following phase:

 Identification & Tracing - It involves activities pertaining to identification
of requirement of modification or maintenance. It is generated by user or
system may itself report via logs or error messages.Here, the maintenance
type is classified also.

 Analysis - The modification is analyzed for its impact on the system

including safety and security implications. If probable impact is severe,
alternative solution is looked for. A set of required modifications is then
materialized into requirement specifications. The cost of
modification/maintenance is analyzed and estimation is concluded.

 Design - New modules, which need to be replaced or modified, are designed

against requirement specifications set in the previous stage. Test cases are
created for validation and verification

 Implementation - The new modules are coded with the help of structured
design created in the design step.Every programmer is expected to do unit
testing in parallel.

 System Testing - Integration testing is done among newly created modules.

Integration testing is also carried out between new modules and the system.
Finally the system is tested as a whole, following regressive testing
procedures.

 Acceptance Testing - After testing the system internally, it is tested for

acceptance with the help of users. If at this state, user complaints some issues
they are addressed or noted to address in next iteration.

 Delivery - After acceptance test, the system is deployed all over the
organization either by small update package or fresh installation of the
system. The final testing takes place at client end after the software is
delivered.

Training facility is provided if required, in addition to the hard copy of user

manual.

 Maintenance management - Configuration management is an essential part

of system maintenance. It is aided with version control tools to control
versions, semi-version or patch management.

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
5
Week 13: Software Maintenance

Software Re-engineering
When we need to update the software to keep it to the current market, without
impacting its functionality, it is called software re-engineering. It is a thorough
process where the design of software is changed and programs are re-written.

Legacy software cannot keep tuning with the latest technology available in the
market. As the hardware become obsolete, updating of software becomes a
headache. Even if software grows old with time, its functionality does not.

For example, initially Unix was developed in assembly language. When language C
came into existence, Unix was re-engineered in C, because working in assembly
language was difficult.

Other than this, sometimes programmers notice that few parts of software need
more maintenance than others and they also need re-engineering.

Re-Engineering Process
 Decide what to re-engineer. Is it whole software or a part of it?
 Perform Reverse Engineering, in order to obtain specifications of existing
software.
 Restructure Program if required. For example, changing function-oriented
programs into object-oriented programs.
Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
6
Week 13: Software Maintenance

 Re-structure data as required.

 Apply Forward engineering concepts in order to get re-engineered
software.
There are few important terms used in Software re-engineering

Reverse Engineering
It is a process to achieve system specification by thoroughly analyzing,
understanding the existing system. This process can be seen as reverse SDLC model,
i.e. we try to get higher abstraction level by analyzing lower abstraction levels.

An existing system is previously implemented design, about which we know

nothing. Designers then do reverse engineering by looking at the code and try to get
the design. With design in hand, they try to conclude the specifications. Thus, going
in reverse from code to system specification.

Program Restructuring
It is a process to re-structure and re-construct the existing software. It is all about
re-arranging the source code, either in same programming language or from one
programming language to a different one. Restructuring can have either source
code-restructuring and data-restructuring or both.

Re-structuring does not impact the functionality of the software but enhance
reliability and maintainability. Program components, which cause errors very
frequently can be changed, or updated with re-structuring.

The dependability of software on obsolete hardware platform can be removed via

re-structuring.

Forward Engineering
Forward engineering is a process of obtaining desired software from the
specifications in hand which were brought down by means of reverse engineering. It
assumes that there was some software engineering already done in the past.

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
7
Week 13: Software Maintenance

Forward engineering is same as software engineering process with only one

difference – it is carried out always after reverse engineering.

Component reusability
A component is a part of software program code, which executes an independent
task in the system. It can be a small module or sub-system itself.

Example
The login procedures used on the web can be considered as components, printing
system in software can be seen as a component of the software.

Components have high cohesion of functionality and lower rate of coupling, i.e. they
work independently and can perform tasks without depending on other modules.

In OOP, the objects are designed are very specific to their concern and have fewer
chances to be used in some other software.

In modular programming, the modules are coded to perform specific tasks which
can be used across number of other software programs.

There is a whole new vertical, which is based on re-use of software component, and
is known as Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE).

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
8
Week 13: Software Maintenance

Re-use can be done at various levels

 Application level - Where an entire application is used as sub-system of new
software.
 Component level - Where sub-system of an application is used.
 Modules level - Where functional modules are re-used.

Software components provide interfaces, which can be used to establish

communication among different components.

Reuse Process
Two kinds of method that can be adopted: either by keeping requirements same and
adjusting components or by keeping components same and modifying
requirements.

 Requirement Specification - The functional and non-functional

requirements are specified, which a software product must comply to, with
the help of existing system, user input or both.

 Design - This is also a standard SDLC process step, where requirements are
defined in terms of software parlance. Basic architecture of system as a
whole and its sub-systems are created.

 Specify Components - By studying the software design, the designers

segregate the entire system into smaller components or sub-systems. One

Course Module
 CS-6209 Software Engineering 1
9
Week 13: Software Maintenance

complete software design turns into a collection of a huge set of components

working together.

 Search Suitable Components - The software component repository is

referred by designers to search for the matching component, on the basis of
functionality and intended software requirements..

 Incorporate Components - All matched components are packed together to

shape them as complete software.

References and Supplementary Materials

Books and Journals

Online Supplementary Reading Materials

1. Software Maintenance and Evolution; https://uclouvain.be/en-cours-2019-
LINGI2252 ; November 13, 2019
2. CS302: Software Engineering; https://learn.saylor.org/course/CS302; November
13, 2019

Online Instructional Videos

Course Module