The DEviSE-Project

Background and problem definition

Software is ubiquitous and is getting more and more complex. To be able to develop new software efficiently and in high quality is a tremendous competitive advantage.

Despite all progress made in software engineering, the development and maintenance of software is still cumbersome and error-prone. It is difficult to produce a high software quality and consider time-to-market and long-term maintainability as well. This is even more difficult if distributed development teams are involved.

When analyzing the total cost of a software, i.e. considering the full lifecycle, the maintenance cost increased from 60% to 90% since the 70s. When analyzing the origin of these costs, studies came to the conclusion that almost half of the maintenance costs are spent by developers to understand the structure and meaning of existing code.

Higher reuse of source code is one solution to the challenge described above. The wheel is not reinvented repeatedly, but existing program logic is reused in other projects.

 

Objectives of DEviSE

With DEviSE these challenges are of the past. DEviSE offers a solution directly integrated into the development environment. This supports engineers early in the development cycle. The three steps DEviSE provides are:

  1. Analysis and identification
    With automatic tools the existing source code is analysed and parts qualifying for reuse are identified.

  2. Extraction and processing
    Most promising component candidates are extracted semi-automatically, generalised for reuse and stored centrally. DEviSE also shows potential quality improvements.

  3. Intelligent supply
    Based on this repository, programmers will be supported during development by a powerful search function, which offers suggestions for reuse. In this way the reuse of components, especially in distributed teams, is facilitated.

Thereby DEviSE increases efficiency, facilitates software development, improves software quality and ensures optimal maintenance. This sums up to a significant advantage for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Flyer

You can download the DEviSE flyer here.