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M.Com. (Informatics) / Research into formalised methods for software engineering has resulted in many solutions to the known problems of software development. One of these problems is the difficulty involved In managing the cost of software development. Though attempts are made to solve the problem of budget and schedule overruns during project management, there still seems to be a lack of useful formal methods and approaches. In this dissertation such a formalised approach is presented. This approach Is based on the principle that cost should be actively managed just like any other aspect of software development. Within this framework the management of cost is defined as a process of identifying, estimating, measuring and controlling those factors that Influence the cost of development. Many methods exists through which the estimation of cost can be facilitated. The fact that such methods are available does not seem to solve the problem because cost management Involves more than just cost estimation. The research done to formalise this approach includes a discussion on the background of software engineering and the state of the science. It also includes an investigation Into the use of development metrics. The cost of software development is analyzed to determine the influence of different environmental factors on cost. A few estimation models are also discussed to determine the useability of such methods during cost management. A synopsis of how these subjects are covered In this dissertation is as follows: Chapter one serves as an Introduction to the research by giving a background to the development of software engineering. The limitations of current practices are emphasized and certain research questions are formulated. Chapter two discusses formal methods of development in the form of process models as a basis for the management of development cost. This chapter also analyzes development metrics as a method of measurement during development and cost management. The analysis provides as a framework for the identification and application of metrics during the process of cost management. Chapter three defines the extent of development cost and analyzes all factors contributing to the cost of software. The chapter discusses each of these factors by examining the possible influence of each on the effort of development and the Interdependence of these factors. Chapter four discusses a case study to be applied during discussions In the rest of the dissertation. Chapter five examines different approaches to the estimation of software development cost. The chapter serves as an introduction to subsequent chapters that deal with specific estimation models. Chapter six discusses an estimation model developed by Blokdijk. The chapter gives an overview of the principles Involved in and the application of the model.

This thesis deals with the management and analysis of source code, which is represented in XML. Using the elementary methods of the XML repository, the XML source code representation is accessed, changed, updated, and saved. We reason about the source code, refactor source code and we visualize dependency graphs for call analysis. The visualized dependencies between files, modules, or packages are used to structure the source code in order to get a system, which is easily to comprehend, to modify and to complete. Sophisticated methods have been developed to slice the source code in order to obtain a working package of a large system, containing only a specific functionality. The basic methods, on which the visualizations and analyses are built on can be changed like changing a plug-in. The visualization methods can be reused in order to handle arbitrary source code representations, e.g., JAML, PHPML, PROLOGML. Dependencies of other context can be visualized, too, e.g., ER diagrams, or website references. The tool SCAV supports source code visualization and analyzing methods. / Diese Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit der Verwaltung und Analyse von Quellcode, der in XML repräsentiert ist. Es werden Abhängigkeitsgraphen visualisiert um ein Projekt leichter verstehen zu können. Es kann auch ein Slice einer bestimmten Methode aus dem Projekt erstellt werden. Die Programmierung ist in Modulen gemacht, so dass die Funktionalität leicht erweitert werden kann.

This thesis presents the evolution of the Western Cultures Database. The project starts with a database design using a Semantic modeling, and continues with the implementation following two techniques: a Relational and a Semantic approach. The project continues with them in parallel, reaching a point where the Relational is left aside because of the advantages of the Semantic (Sem-ODB) approach. The Semantic implementation produces as a result the Western Culture Semantic Database Application - web interface (the main contribution of this thesis). The database is created and populated using Sem ODB and the web interface is built using WebRG (report generator), HTML, JavaScript and JavaChart (applets for graphical representation). The resulting semantic application permits the storage and retrieval of data, the display of reports and the graphical representation of the data through a Web interface. All of these to support research assertions about the impact of historical figures in Western Cultures.

This thesis proposes a novel approach, called Analogy-X to extend and improve the classical data-intensive analogy approach for software effort estimation. The Analogy-X approach combines the notions of distance matrix correlation found in ecology literature and statistic analysis techniques to provide useful inferential statistics to support analogy-based systems. Data-intensive analogy for software effort estimation has been proposed as a viable alternative to other prediction methods such as linear regression. In many cases, researchers found analogy outperformed algorithmic methods. However, the overall performance of analogy depends on the dataset quality or relevance of project cases to the target project, and the feature subset selected in the analogy-based model. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to assess its appropriateness for a specific dataset, in most of the cases analogy will continue to execute regardless of the dataset quality. The Analogy-X approach is a set of procedures that utilize the principles of Mantel randomization test to provide inferential statistics to Analogy. Inspired by the Mantel correlation randomization test commonly used in ecology and psychology, Analogy-X uses the strength of correlation between the distance matrix of project features and the distance matrix of known effort values of the dataset to assess the suitability of the dataset for analogy, to identify the most appropriate feature subset, and to remove any atypical project cases from the dataset. The empirical studies show that Analogy-X is capable of: -- Detect extremely outlying project cases that will ultimately distort prediction outcomes using a sensitivity analysis strategy. -- Detect relevant project features that are useful to identify potential source analogues in a stepwise fashion similar to that of stepwise regression. -- Identifying whether analogy-based approach is appropriate for the dataset Analogy-X, thus is a robust solution, provides a sound statistical basis for analogy. It removes the need of using any forms of heuristic search and greatly improves its algorithmic performance. The studies also show that the Analogy-X approach is capable of removing the bottlenecks of performance in data-intensive analogy. The overall results obtained also suggest that a fully automated data-intensive analogy for software effort estimation can be implemented using the Analogy-X approach, and it is indeed an effective front end to analogy-based systems. The contribution of this work is significant since it provides an approach that will have major impact on the evolution of data-intensive analogy-based and case-based reasoning systems.

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