Investigating component-based maintenance and the effect of software evolution: a reengineering approach using data clustering

As software applications increase in size, grouping the application into smaller, more manageable components is often proposed as a means of assisting software maintenance activities. This paper investigates the suitability of components generated using data clustering techniques. The suitability of the approach is based on real case studies from a commercial environment. Successive versions of the software application are used to investigate how the software applications change throughout the maintenance process. Within this paper, the change process as a whole is referred to as the process of software evolution. This paper provides an indication of how applications evolve over time and how clustering techniques are affected by the evolution process.