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Large-scale information retrieval in software engineering - an experience report from industrial application

Unterkalmsteiner, Michael ; Gorschek, Tony ; Feldt, Robert and Lavesson, Niklas (2016) In Empirical Software Engineering 21(6). p.2324-2365
Abstract

Software Engineering activities are information intensive. Research proposes Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to support engineers in their daily tasks, such as establishing and maintaining traceability links, fault identification, and software maintenance. We describe an engineering task, test case selection, and illustrate our problem analysis and solution discovery process. The objective of the study is to gain an understanding of to what extent IR techniques (one potential solution) can be applied to test case selection and provide decision support in a large-scale, industrial setting. We analyze, in the context of the studied company, how test case selection is performed and design a series of experiments evaluating the... (More)

Software Engineering activities are information intensive. Research proposes Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to support engineers in their daily tasks, such as establishing and maintaining traceability links, fault identification, and software maintenance. We describe an engineering task, test case selection, and illustrate our problem analysis and solution discovery process. The objective of the study is to gain an understanding of to what extent IR techniques (one potential solution) can be applied to test case selection and provide decision support in a large-scale, industrial setting. We analyze, in the context of the studied company, how test case selection is performed and design a series of experiments evaluating the performance of different IR techniques. Each experiment provides lessons learned from implementation, execution, and results, feeding to its successor. The three experiments led to the following observations: 1) there is a lack of research on scalable parameter optimization of IR techniques for software engineering problems; 2) scaling IR techniques to industry data is challenging, in particular for latent semantic analysis; 3) the IR context poses constraints on the empirical evaluation of IR techniques, requiring more research on developing valid statistical approaches. We believe that our experiences in conducting a series of IR experiments with industry grade data are valuable for peer researchers so that they can avoid the pitfalls that we have encountered. Furthermore, we identified challenges that need to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between laboratory IR experiments and real applications of IR in the industry.

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author
; ; and
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Data mining, Experiment, Information retrieval, Test case selection
in
Empirical Software Engineering
volume
21
issue
6
pages
42 pages
publisher
Springer
external identifiers
  • scopus:84946763269
ISSN
1382-3256
DOI
10.1007/s10664-015-9410-8
project
Embedded Applications Software Engineering
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
7d5ac6e8-a78b-4f6b-8bd6-398984b3b9ab
date added to LUP
2018-09-27 11:13:53
date last changed
2022-04-10 01:46:30
@article{7d5ac6e8-a78b-4f6b-8bd6-398984b3b9ab,
  abstract     = {{<p>Software Engineering activities are information intensive. Research proposes Information Retrieval (IR) techniques to support engineers in their daily tasks, such as establishing and maintaining traceability links, fault identification, and software maintenance. We describe an engineering task, test case selection, and illustrate our problem analysis and solution discovery process. The objective of the study is to gain an understanding of to what extent IR techniques (one potential solution) can be applied to test case selection and provide decision support in a large-scale, industrial setting. We analyze, in the context of the studied company, how test case selection is performed and design a series of experiments evaluating the performance of different IR techniques. Each experiment provides lessons learned from implementation, execution, and results, feeding to its successor. The three experiments led to the following observations: 1) there is a lack of research on scalable parameter optimization of IR techniques for software engineering problems; 2) scaling IR techniques to industry data is challenging, in particular for latent semantic analysis; 3) the IR context poses constraints on the empirical evaluation of IR techniques, requiring more research on developing valid statistical approaches. We believe that our experiences in conducting a series of IR experiments with industry grade data are valuable for peer researchers so that they can avoid the pitfalls that we have encountered. Furthermore, we identified challenges that need to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between laboratory IR experiments and real applications of IR in the industry.</p>}},
  author       = {{Unterkalmsteiner, Michael and Gorschek, Tony and Feldt, Robert and Lavesson, Niklas}},
  issn         = {{1382-3256}},
  keywords     = {{Data mining; Experiment; Information retrieval; Test case selection}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{12}},
  number       = {{6}},
  pages        = {{2324--2365}},
  publisher    = {{Springer}},
  series       = {{Empirical Software Engineering}},
  title        = {{Large-scale information retrieval in software engineering - an experience report from industrial application}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10664-015-9410-8}},
  doi          = {{10.1007/s10664-015-9410-8}},
  volume       = {{21}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}