Um ambiente de suporte a experimentos controlados especificados em EXPDSL

Abstract

An empirical study consists in a test comparing what we believe in relation to what we observe. There are several forms of empirical studies, including case study, research and controlled experiments, all with the essence of seeking evidence to validate a theory. The realization of these studies represents an important role in the scientific community, especially the controlled experiment, which is considered the classic method from the empirical studies. A controlled experiment provides control over the variables of a study, allowing the creation of more focused studies with statistical potential for significant results, used in the validation of hypotheses. In software engineering, there is an increasing need for development and implementation of controlled experiments. This reality brings discussions on how to perform these experiments with planning, execution and analysis more efficiently. Thus, the search for alternatives to support the researcher in the process of experimentation has been a topic of increasing interest. This work aims to propose the infrastructure of a support environment for controlled experiments that helps the researcher during the planning, formalization, execution and analysis of their experiments. During the dissertation will be presented: (i) a comparative analysis of available support tools, listing the requirements and how each tool attends; (ii) the architecture for the proposed environment, how it is organized and implemented; (iii) the implementation of a visual editor of DSLs, the Visual ExpDSL, used for specify experiments in ExpDSL; (iv) and the planning, execution and analysis of a case study designed to assess the tool when applied to a real scenario.