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Encyclopedia of software engineering, (2nd ed.)
Marciniak J., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 2002. 1584 pp. Type: Book (9780471210085)
Date Reviewed: Jun 19 2003

This two-volume set explores the core knowledge of the software engineering discipline. The encyclopedia is a guide for novices in software engineering, and a reference for software professionals. The editorial board, with its editor-in-chief John Marciniak, adopted an approach for the text where selected main topics are addressed by major papers. Each major paper lists references to its sources. The authors use a wealth of figures and tables, which give the reader a basic understanding of a topic. The length of papers varies from two to over 20 pages. The encyclopedia also contains many short entries that define specific terms according to IEEE standards. More than 250 experts, from both academia and industry, have contributed to this work.

The encyclopedia includes a foreword, written by Victor R. Basili, and a list of abbreviations and acronyms. Each of the two volumes includes an index. The encyclopedia contains over 500 entries, covering 35 subject categories, and over 200 major papers. Among the topics discussed, one can find papers, such as Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software (by Mary Shaw), Personal Software Process, Team Software Process (by Watts S. Humphrey), Software Architecture (by David Garlan), Software Engineering Ethics (by Donald Gotterbarn), and Software Evolution (by M.M. Lehman). The encyclopedia also includes papers on applications of software engineering in various areas, such as aviation, health systems, and telecommunications.

It is not possible for any single person to be able to judge the quality of the whole contents of this work. I found many high quality papers. On the other hand, some issues are not elaborated to the expected level of detail. As in several software engineering textbooks, the emphasis is put more on software processes, software engineering management, analysis, design, validation, and testing, without satisfactory coverage of implementation (related mainly to the programming issues). It is impossible, however, to cover all aspects of software engineering (for example, all programming languages developed so far) in one work. I believe that the design of the encyclopedia, which has entries ranging from short definitions to multi-paragraph explanations, and biographies to detailed scholarly papers, is appropriate. The encyclopedia serves, not only as a reference, but also as a guide or handbook on selected issues. This makes the work more stable in the changing world of the software engineering discipline.

Subjects covered in the encyclopedia include: applications, compilers, concurrency, configuration management, cost estimation, database management systems, design, distributed software engineering, implementation, infrastructure, information technology, information engineering, knowledge based software engineering, maintenance and measurement, formal methods, modeling and simulation, and parallel systems. In addition, the following topics are presented: people, process, programming languages, project management, prototyping, quality, reliability, real-time systems, requirements management, reuse, security, software engineering environment, standards, testing, user interfaces, verification and validation, and the Web. More than 100 biographies of software engineering practitioners are also included.

The problem with this work is in its effective use. The index provided is not sufficiently detailed, and does not highlight the major papers associated with index entries. Understanding the structure without the help of an electronic search is rather difficult. For example, what if a student wants to find relevant information about software life-cycle models? Such an entry does not exist, so he or she tries the life-cycle model index entry, without success. Then, he or she finds an entry for life-cycle, with 31 references. A patient (but not comfortable) search can lead to the paper Process Models in Software Engineering (by Walt Scacchi), which is exactly what the student has been looking for. I believe that an electronic version of this work is a must.

Fortunately, the encyclopedia is supported by Wiley InterScience (http://www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/ese/). This site offers a list of papers sorted alphabetically, a list of subject categories, the list of definitions, and a full search service. The contents of major papers are available online as well, but only for authorized users. Unfortunately, there are no links to the printed version (not even page numbers). A combination of the search service and the printed version would improve the usability considerably. I hope that the electronic version is a step toward regular updates and extensions of the content, as would be appropriate for the dynamically evolving discipline of software engineering.

On the whole, this work does a good job of surveying most software engineering-related issues; it is the most comprehensive reference for software engineering I have ever seen. The encyclopedia will be especially suitable for libraries that provide works on computing.

Reviewer:  M. Bielikova Review #: CR127816 (0310-1005)
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