Collecting issue management data for analysis with a unified model and API descriptions

Reuse of analysis methods and tools for data from different issue management systems is challenging because there are differences in how the data is accessed and represented. While various approaches for collecting and analysing software engineering data have been developed, they do not generally pay so much attention into how to actually get the data from various sources. This paper presents a combined model for issue management data that is based on an investigation of four issue management systems. It also presents a proof of concept tool that can collect issue management data from different services into our analysis and visualization framework using an API description language that defines how to get the issue management data and how to convert it into our model. The aim of this approach is to allow the addition of new data sources by simply providing their API descriptions.