Dependency Analysis and Visualization as Tools to Prolong System Life

This paper describes our experience using dependency analysis and visualization as a tool to identify intervention points for migrating applications to environments where they can live out their natural lives, less dependent of the vagaries of platform obsolescence. The first part of the paper describes our methodology and deliverables. The second part presents case studies on applying this approach to commercially installed applications. Application Life The typical business application has a useful life of 5 –15 years. We give special status to the venerated long lived applications that have lived to a grand old age of 15-30 years. According to a recent survey by the Standish group over 30% of new application development projects are never implemented, and die stillborn if you will. So why is it that a thing that is in essence pure intellectual property and expressed in an electronic medium that has no wear parts and will copy perfectly any number of times, would not last as long ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: COMPSAC
• Authors: Dave McComb, Simon Robe, Simon Hoare, Stew Crawford-Hines
• Keywords: Business Applications, COMPSAC 2002, Premature Death, Software Engineering, Typical Business Application