On the Precision and Accuracy of Impact Analysis Techniques

Several techniques and algorithms for impact analysis of software systems have been recently published in literature. Most of them, however, are not practical enough to be applied in the software industry because, among other reasons, they produce too many false results (either positive or negative). In this paper, we propose and evaluate the use of two measures from information retrieval, namely precision and recall, to help express and compare precision and accuracy of impact analysis techniques and algorithms.