Augur: Incorporating Hidden Dependencies and Variable Granularity in Change Impact Analysis.

Presenter: Tushar Sharma
Date: 12 October 2016

Abstract

Software change impact analysis (CIA) methods enable developers to understand potential impacts of a code change so that the change can be executed confidently without affecting reliability of the software. However, existing CIA approaches do not support CIA for all source code granularities. Additionally, they lack support for inter-granular change impact queries and hidden dependencies. In this presentation, I introduce Augur, an automated static code analysis-based CIA approach that addresses these shortcomings. Augur infers and maintains semantic and environment dependencies along with data and control dependencies between source code entities across granularities. Additionally, Augur uses Change Impact Query Language, a novel query language for impact analysis proposed in this paper, to support inter-granular CIA queries with batch querying feature.