Chapter 7 Mixed - Strategy approach – an overview

Last chapter motivated the quest for effective solutions to software evolution beyond conventional techniques. Among many problems complicating evolution of programs, two are particularly acute, namely poor visibility of changes, and explosion of look-a-like component versions caused by weak generic design capabilities of conventional techniques. If similarities and differences among past releases remain to much extent implicit, it is difficult to reuse features already implemented in past releases when building new release of an evolving software. Any changes affecting past releases must then be done case-by-case on each system release. In this Chapter, we present the concepts of mixed-strategy approach which relies on clear exposition of similarities and differences among the software releases, and leads to more effective reuse-based evolution. The purpose of this Chapter is to build an intuitive understanding of the approach, which will help the reader easier absorb technical details presented in subsequent chapters.