EDF: a formalism for describing and reusing software experience

Abstract

One approach to achieve high levels of reuse of software experience is to create a database with information on software products, processes, and measurements. The authors present the Extensible Description Formalism (EDF), a language to describe these databases. EDF is a generalization of the faceted index approach to classification. Objects in EDF can be described in terms of different sets of facets and other object descriptions. Classification schemes are easy to extend by adding new attributes or refining existing ones. EDF has been implemented and used to classify a large software library. The authors present the EDF approach to classification; the development of a classification of data structure operations and packages; and a software defect classification scheme used to describe, explain, and predict defects in data structure packages.<>