After successful completion of the course, students are able to

• describe and apply the software maintenance life cycle and foundations of software evolution
  
• to describe methods of software maintenance in detail and implement them in real software projects
• migrate simple code parts from outdated programming languages into modern software ecosystems

The course discusses the software maintenance life cycle and the laws of software evolution in detail and with particular emphasis in the areas of legacy systems, reverse and re-engineering, refactoring, design patterns and design for change.
In addition the basic principles and methods of software maintenance and evolution are shown by practical examples and exercises.

During the course there are two exercises to solve:

• Exercise 1: Porting a COBOL Program to Java
• Exercise 2: Web-Application maintenance

In several lectures, students are taught theoretical basics, methods and concepts of software maintenance and software evolution. After an individual exercise, the theoretical knowledge acquired in the lectures is applied and deepened in practical exercises in groups of two to three students.

ECTS-Breakdown:

• Preliminary Discussion: 1h
• Lectures: 14h

• Lab 1 - Evolution: 18h
• COBOL Programmin Language 4 h
• Code Analysis 2 h
• Porting the Code to Java 9 h
• Documentation 3 h
• Lab 2 - Maintenance: 41h
• Corrective Maintenance 6h
• Adaptive Maintenance 10h
• Preventiv Maintenance 15h
• Perfecting Maintenance 8h
• Documenation 2h
• Evaluation Interview: 1h

Total: 75h (3 ECTS)

Prerequisite for a positive assessment is an attendance of at least 60% in the lectures.
Furthermore, the assessment is composed of the performance in the exercise parts which are evaluated in the form of interviews.