Full text
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| Author(s): |
Ubirajara Pacheco Maltez Junior
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Carlos. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC/SB) |
| Defense date: | 2006-09-28 |
| Examining board members: |
José Carlos Maldonado;
Rosana Teresinha Vaccare Braga;
Itana Maria de Souza Gimenes
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| Advisor: | José Carlos Maldonado |
| Abstract | |
The creation and update of knowledge bases with data that provide evidences of the efficacy, or non-efficacy, of software methods, techniques or products can be facilitated by experimental studies and their replications in diverse contexts, so that the knowledge base can grow and be consolidated. However, replications generate great amount of data which must be collected, stored, and on later, analyzed, making the non-automated management of such information very error-prone. In this context, the Readers Project ? a collaborative research project formed by Brazilian and North-American researchers ? which this work is part of, has had as main goals the development, validation, packaging and consolidation of a knowledge base on some techniques, such as PBR (Perspective Based Reading), which is a reading technique used to defect detection in software artifacts. With the several replications of experimental studies that were conducted along this project, in particular the replications of the PBR Experiment (Basili et al., 1996), it has become evident the need of computational support in several activities of the experimentation process. Therefore, in this work, the ExpVVT tool was defined, designed and implemented with the goal to automate the Planning and Operation activities of the PBR Experiment. The tool was implemented based on a meta-table structure, which facilitates possible evolutions in this experiment context. It is emphasized that the Lab Package, which contains all the necessary artifacts needed to replicate an experimental study, is also stored electronically, with the tool support, which facilitates the tracing of its evolution. The tool?s use was explored simulating with data of some of the PBR Experiment replications which were conducted at the Readers Project context. Although just a single simulation took place, it can already be noticed the support that the tool can provide to future replications of this experiment, reducing the costs associated with every necessary material in a replication and also guiding the experiment participants, so that the activities are made in a more controlled way. (AU) | |