Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep as it looks like there is a rough consensus for retention. I will note, however, that Wikipedia is not a place where you get exposure; you get exposure first before popping up here. MuZemike 22:57, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit
AfDs for this article: 
 * – (View AfD) (View log)

I declined this as a speedy G4, the first AfD talked about pasted text and this is clearly not a paste of the same article, although hardly an improvement. Also inclined to give it another debate as the the first AfD was way back in 2006 when things were different and the "new" article was created in 2007. Also, I got a few google book hits for the product.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  17:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

keep. While this reads like an advertisement, it could use some work. Tangurena (talk) 22:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

delete. While original AfD nomination did mention "pasted text", it also said that it was both promotional and non-notable. It still is both, so I claim that it still meets Speedy G4, but if not, it should still be deleted. --Brouhaha (talk) 23:20, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

biased opinion. Hi. I'm Ira Baxter, the CTO for Semantic Designs, and the architect for the DMS Toolkit. I'm pleased to see it in Wikipedia. I don't know what you call "notable". You will find DMS in a variety of technical articles on software engineering under Google Scholar. The DMS technology is one of the very few tools on the planet that can automatically modify software reliably. The only other ones which I know which come close are TXL_(programming_language) and Stratego/XT, which also have equally notable (or non-notable by your definition) entries in Wikipedia. DMS has been specifically used to carry out a variety of serious industrial large-scale software reengineering tasks; to my knowledge, TXL was used for some Y2K work almost a decade ago but has not been used since for industrial purposes and Stratego simply hasn't been used for this at all.

[revised] A specific example of DMS usage was to automatically reengineer the software in the B-2 bomber; see http://www.semanticdesigns.com/Products/Services/NorthropGrummanB2.html. You'll mostly have to take my word for this, because as a black program the USAF and Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor, were extremely reluctant to let us say anything at all, let alone this. NGC has pretty fierce lawyers and would long ago have stepped on this if it weren't fact. However, you can see our work in the NGC news release at http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/pages/news_releases.html?d=145810 at the phrase "The task of re-hosting the FM OFP software..." and the mention of a JOVIAL to C translator which we built using DMS, see http://www.semdesigns.com/Products/MigrationTools/JOVIAL2C.html

What you call "advertising" in the article is merely statement of technology capabilities.

For why you should pay any attention to me, see http://www.semdesigns.com/Company/People/idbaxter. You are welcome to contact me at idbaxter@semdesigns.com. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.78.131 (talk) 10:07, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence to support the notability of DMS, submitted by Ira Baxter by invitation from discussants above:


 * "DMS Software Reengineering Toolkit", listed in Software Engineering bible by Roger_Pressman, one of the most recognized authors in software engineering. http://books.google.com/books?id=QfnjAPx9xPAC&pg=PA851&dq=DMS+Software+Reengineering


 * Post-grant review of DMS originally funded as a $2M research project by the funding agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Advanced Technology Program, 1998. 4 star rating of out of 4. http://statusreports.atp.nist.gov/reports/95-09-0059.htm


 * 12th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering 2005 : Page 13 http://books.google.com/books?id=F91VAAAAMAAJ&q=DMS+Software+Reengineering Article on reengineering Boeing flight software using DMS. (WCRE conference link: http://swerl.tudelft.nl/wcre2008/)


 * Technical paper: "DMS®: Program Transformations for Practical Scalable Software Evolution" in 2004 proceedings of International_Conference_on_Software_Engineering, the number one software engineering conference. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=999466&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=55567354&CFTOKEN=76359207 Cited by 175 other papers; check Google Scholar.


 * Discussion of DMS in book Generative programming: methods, tools, and applications By Krzysztof Czarnecki, Ulrich Eisenecker. Czarnecki made the ideas behind template metaprogramming practical. http://books.google.com/books?id=4CPmr3qcVvYC&dq=Generative+Programming+Czarnecki&q=DMS+ See also http://www.generative-programming.org/


 * Technical paper "Case study: Re-engineering C++ component models via automatic program transformation". Details of automated reengineering of Boeing aircraft mission software to enable remotely piloted vehicles with high bandwidth cameras. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0950584906001856

I additionally offer SD's website (http://www.semanticdesigns.com) as evidence of the interesting nature of DMS. Our website has some 70+ software engineering tools offered for about a decade (check the Wayback machine) for commercial sale, from test coverage, to intellectual property protection, to mass code migration, to software quality analysis. They are *all* built using DMS.

Finally, I note that if you decide to remove the DMS entry, you must reasonably consider removing the entries for TXL and Stratego (as well as lesser systems) mentioned on the wikipedia page Program_transformation as they have the same goals, and can be found in many of the same publications and conferences. If you do so, I think you will do a serious disservice to the software engineering community, which has traditionally done virtually everything by hand. Program Transformation tools are the way to automate software engineering, and this kind of technology belongs in Wikipedia where it can gain broad exposure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.253.78.131 (talk) 08:28, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, JForget  22:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Keep The references above seem sufficient--especially the citations mentioned for the 2004 conference paper. it would of course have helped avoid problems had they been in the article from the start.  But, FWIW, different program discussed as the same conference or in the same book do not necessarily have the same notability.   DGG ( talk ) 00:01, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.