Evaluating Software Maintenance Technology

It is widely documented that the cost of maintenance activities is the dominant part of the total lifetime expenditure on a software system. Still, there is no commonly accepted framework for evaluating technology that is supposed to support maintenance. This paper discusses methods for such evaluation, which include both analytical work, such as development of taxonomies, and empirical work based on benchmarks. Several of the methods have been applied in experiments that we have already finished, in experiments that we are currently running and in planned experiments. What we report is initial work carried out within severe resource limitations. Hence, our work should be regarded as a basis for more extensive work which is required in this area.