A design document generator to support a linkage between code and document

Abstract

In recent years, more than half of current companies are still working on old systems. Software maintenance, testing, quality assurance, reuse, and integration are only a few examples of software engineering activities that involve old systems. A key aspect related to all these processes is the identification of the components of a system and the comprehension of the existing linkage between components. One way to identify these components of system is by analyzing its documentation. However, in many cases, documentation is a missing or obsolete item in old software maintenance. As the software technology advances evolve over time, there is a need to create and maintain a relationship between source code and documentation. This linkage needs to be maintained to ensure that software documentation remains consistent and up-to-date with code. This consistency will assist quality and reduce maintenance work. A new relationship model is proposed between documentation and low level software that includes the code and its associated structures and physical components. The significant benefits of this research can be observed at its ability to support document viewers to manage and maintain the existing system. A prototype was developed and an evaluation was carried out to realize the proof of concept. The results show that the proposed model is significant and provides a useful access between code and documentation.