Functional Paleontology: The Evolution of User-Visible System Services

1
Functional PaleontologyThe Evolution of
User-Visible System Services

• Authors Antón, A. I. and Potts, C.
• Presented by Shan Li
• CISC 864 Mining Software Engineering Data

2
Outline

• Discussion of the paper
• Contributions of the paper
• Purposes, examples, results, significance
• The approach used in the paper
• Personal Perspectives
• Pleasant points in the paper
• Unpleasant points in the paper
• Conclusion Questions

3
Before the Discussion
Requirements
4
What is needed to be known?

• The balance between in forward engineering and
  reverse engineering is about the requirements
  which emphasized in forwarding engineering, while
  de-emphasized in reverse engineering.

5
The Research Purpose
To redress the balance
To discuss the implication of general patterns
of functional evolution for forward engineering

To achieve the general patterns of functional
evolution
6
Research Methods

• To restrict the study to the functionality
  evolution
• To propose an approach functional Paleontology
• Paleontology the study of the forms of life
  existing in prehistoric times, as represented by
  the fossils of plans, animals and other organisms
• Analyzing fossil record of service evolution for
  a single system
• Services collections of functions related to
  purposes or mode of use

7
Research Methods

• To characterize evolution in systems, based on
  Shaws classification scheme for software
  engineering research

8
Research Methods

• To investigate into fossil record in an example
• The telephony services available to domestic
  subscribers over a 50-year period
• Specifically, services contained in the call
  guide of the Atlanta telephone directories for
  the years 1950-1999
• To study the profile of services benefits and
  burdens in a systems evolution

9
Research Methods

• To develop a conceptual base
• Functional morphology
• Overall profile of benefits and burdens exhibited
  by a system during its evolution
• Benefits system-use outcomes which meet a
  beneficiarys goals
• Burdens which undermine these benefits
• Functional evolution
• Vocabulary of Evolutionary types

10
Research Results

• The results of the telephony services evolution
• Categories of Benefits
• Categories of Burdens
• Service Epochs and Expansions
• Punctuated Evolution Pattern
• Periodic Retrenchment
• Functional Decentralization

11
Research Results
Benefits profile over 50 years From 1950-1999
12
Research Results
Burden profile over 50 years From 1950-1999
13
Research Results

• The evolution of telephony services suggests two
  general trends
• Benefits for the actor beneficiary precede
  benefits for others
• Services initially benefits the people who
  actually perform tasks
• Object-level benefits precede meta-level benefits
• Object-level the creation and transfer of
  information
• Meta-level how the system is manipulating
  information

14
Research Results

• Customization features may be relatively
  unimportant in most systems. Lets put it other
  way, user customization may be significantly
  limited by the legacy of core design decisions
• The approach is relevant to the management of
  long-life software systems.

15
Future Research

• Feasibility Questions
• Is it possible to relate the functional
  morphology of the system in question to the
  software architecture?
• Characterization Questions
• Method Questions
• Generalization Questions
• Selection Questions

16
Personal Perspective

• Pleasant Points
• The paper has excellent structure and describes
  their research method from the general level to
  case study level and explains their discoveries
  from case study level to the general level
• The paper defines every terms used.
• The paper restricts the study into an aspect of a
  system
• The paper discusses the disadvantages of the
  results based on the limited data

17
Personal Perspective

• Unpleasant Points
• The paper borrows many terms from other
  disciplines, biology, engineering, linguistics.
• Such as paleontology, morphology, langue..
• The paper does not emphasize the implication of
  the results for forward engineering of software
  engineering, which is one of the purpose of the
  paper.

18
Conclusion

• Contribution of the paper
• Proposed a new methodology, generalized their
  approach by applied to most systems dominated by
  dynamic information systems problem frame.
• The approach is therefore relevant to the
  management of long-life software systems
• The research is not only for software systems,
  but also for others

19
Thank You Questions