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Improving Software Engineering Research Through Experimentation Workbenches

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From Software Engineering to Formal Methods and Tools, and Back

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 11865))

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Abstract

Experimentation with software prototypes plays a fundamental role in software engineering research. In contrast to many other scientific disciplines, however, explicit support for this key activity in software engineering is relatively small. While some approaches to improve this situation have been proposed by the software engineering community, experiments are still very difficult and sometimes impossible to replicate.

In this paper, we propose the concept of an experimentation workbench as a means of explicit support for experimentation in software engineering research. In particular, we discuss core requirements that an experimentation workbench should satisfy in order to qualify as such and to offer a real benefit for researchers. Beyond their core benefits for experimentation, we stipulate that experimentation workbenches will also have benefits in regard to reproducibility and repeatability of software engineering research. Further, we illustrate this concept with a scenario and a case study, and describe relevant challenges as well as our experience with experimentation workbenches.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Available at GitHub: https://github.com/KernelHaven/KernelHaven.

  2. 2.

    Available at GitHub: https://github.com/KernelHaven/MetricHaven.

  3. 3.

    In the case of minor variations, of course, also variations of existing plugins or even parameterized instances can be used. In order to support this a parametrization approach for plugins exists.

  4. 4.

    http://www.revamp2-project.eu/.

  5. 5.

    https://sse.uni-hildesheim.de/en/research/projects/easy-producer/.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partially supported by the ITEA3 project REVaMP\(^2\), funded by the BMBF (German Ministry of Research and Education) under grant 01IS16042H. Any opinions expressed herein are solely by the authors and not by the BMBF.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany

    Klaus Schmid, Sascha El-Sharkawy & Christian Kröher

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  1. Klaus Schmid
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  2. Sascha El-Sharkawy
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  3. Christian Kröher
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Klaus Schmid , Sascha El-Sharkawy or Christian Kröher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy

    Maurice H. ter Beek

  2. Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy

    Alessandro Fantechi

  3. Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Laura Semini

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Schmid, K., El-Sharkawy, S., Kröher, C. (2019). Improving Software Engineering Research Through Experimentation Workbenches. In: ter Beek, M., Fantechi, A., Semini, L. (eds) From Software Engineering to Formal Methods and Tools, and Back. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11865. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30985-5_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30985-5_6

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-30985-5

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