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Vol: 49(63) No: 3 / September 2004

Managing Software Evolution with MECASP
Elaine Isnard
Prologue Software, France, 12, avenue des Tropiques, 91943 LES ULIS, Paris, France, e-mail: eisnard@prologue-software.fr
Enrique Perez
Virtual Desk, Spain, Avenida de Brasil, 17 5-a/b 28020 Madrid, Spain, e-mail: eperez@virtualdesk.es
Radu Bercaru
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: radu@ici.ro
Alexandra Galatescu
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: agal@ici.ro
Vladimir Florian
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: vladimir@ici.ro
Laura Costea
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: laura@ici.ro
Dan Conescu
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: dconescu@ici.ro
Alexandru Stanciu
National Institute for R&D in Informatics, 8-10 Averescu Avenue, 71316 Bucharest 1, Romania, e-mail: alex@.ici.ro


Keywords: heterogeneous software integration, maintenance and adaptation, software modeling in XML, XML repository, merge of software versions

Abstract
MECASP (Maintenance and improvement of component-based applications diffused in ASP mode) is a set of software tools developed during an European IST project. It aims at the integration, maintenance and adaptation of heterogeneous software and data structures, based on versioned XML models. This paper enumerates and briefly describes the specific features, tools and functions that make MECASP differ from the existing (open source and commercial) products for version management. It presents the software definition in XML meta-models and models and the functions and tools for their management, maintenance and adaptation. The paper also describes the infrastructure components and the functions of an open source-based XML repository manager, of its interface (a MECASP-specific browser) and of a rule-based and semantically enhanced merger, all devoted to the management of the heterogeneous software and data structure evolution.

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