Conceptual Model for a Software Maintenance Environment

A conceptual model for a software maintenance method named COMFORM (Configuration Management Formalization for Maintenance) is presented. COMFORM provides guidelines and procedures for carrying out the maintenance process, while establishing a systematic approach for the support of existing software systems. Incremental documentation, the process of building up the software documentation while the system is maintained, has a key role in this maintenance method. The documentation required by the method consists of keeping the maintenance history and information related to the software modules being maintained. Forms have been created in order to guide the maintainers during the maintenance process. Thus, their task will be of filling in forms for generating the required documentation instead of defining their own document structures. The system information obtained by filling in forms has been formalized according to a data model which provides a common basis for the representation of the method. This paper presents the conceptual model for COMFORM which was obtained using the data model termed Object Representation Model (ORM). ORM has been used because of its enhanced semantic capabilities and it provides the necessary generality and standardization for software representation.