Abstract

In many software design and evaluation techniques,either the software evolution problem is not systematicallyelaborated, or only the impact of evolution isconsidered. Thus, most of the time software is changed byediting the components of the software system, i.e. breakingdown the software system. The software engineeringdiscipline provides many mechanisms that allow evolutionwithout breaking down the system; however, the contextswhere these mechanisms are applicable are not taken intoaccount. Furthermore, the software design and evaluationtechniques do not support identifying these contexts. In thispaper, we provide a taxonomy of software evolution that canbe used to identify the context of the evolution problem. Theidentified contexts are used to retrieve, from the softwareengineering discipline, the mechanisms, which can evolvethe software software without breaking it down. To buildsuch a taxonomy, we build a model for software evolutionand use this model to identify the factors that effect theselection of software evolution mechanisms. Our approachis based on solution sets, however; the contents of these setsmay vary at different stages of the software life-cycle. Toaddress this problem, we introduce perspectives; that arefilters to select relevant elements from a solution set. Weapply our taxonomy to a parser tool to show how it copedwith problematic evolution problems.