Analyzing software design inspections in the context of UML 2.0

Inspections are established as quality assurance techniques in software development. In spite of that they are subjected to various improvements, because they have to evolve together with the artefacts under inspection. Design inspections are used to detect flaws in design artefacts in order to avoid negative effects in subsequent software artefacts. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a quasi standard for modelling and representing software designs. The Object Management Group (OMG), which defines and maintains the UML, is currently upgrading the UML specification to version 2.0. The increased girth and complexity of the upgrade represents a new challenge for design inspections. The goal of this diploma thesis is to analyze the impact of the UML upgrades introduced through the change of version onto design inspections. In order to be able to draw unambiguous conclusions from the impact analysis, we focus on a single software quality as inspection criteria. Due to the exceptional position of reuse for market-oriented companies, reusability is a reasonable choice. Therefore, the concretized purpose of this work is to identify reusability criteria in the context of UML 2.0 and to relate them to design inspections. The results are as follows: (1) A classification of the UML 2.0 diagram types regarding to their altered ability to be utilized in an inspection process, and (2) an UML 2.0-oriented reusability inspection approach. The results are based next to the analysis on interviews with experts in software reuse.