Software Documentation And Maintenance (dogma)

Software maintenance includes activities like correcting faults in software systems, adapting systems to changing environments, or improving the quality of systems, e.g., performance. Software maintenance is usually done by people other than those who developed a software system. It requires detailed documentation and the possibility to attain an overview of the system structure, the interaction of the various components, and the effects of changes. The main focus of this research project was to combine state-of-the-art methodologies in a new tool in order to improve the support of documentation and maintenance activities. Additional goals were to identify major problems in the field, to determine possible improvements, to investigate how these improvements were supported by tools, to summarize deficiencies of existing tools, and to ameliorate these deficiencies in the design of a new tool. The resulting tool, DOgMA, has served as a contribution to the improvement of the documentation and maintenance process.