Workshop on Empirical Studies in Reverse Engineering

The field of reverse engineering, originally tied to the analysis and restructuring of legacy systems, proved to be equally effective in supporting the evolution of modern software systems (e.g., OO code, Web applications, etc.). Correspondingly, a high number of techniques and tools have been developed to address the program comprehension needs of the programmers facing maintenance tasks on any kind of software. So far, the validation of the proposed approaches consisted mainly of proofs of concepts and limited case studies. The aim of this workshop was to assess the role of the empirical studies in the future developments of reverse engineering. Knowledge on the actual effectiveness of the available techniques and tools can be gained only through controlled experimentation. In this workshop, the scope of investigation of such studies was considered, and a (provisional) reference taxonomy of tools and techniques was discussed. Then, the main features of the empirical studies specifically designed to validate reverse engineering tools or techniques have been thoroughly examined