Project Name: COTS Usage Tracking Tool

Sponsor:
Jesal Bhuta (email: jesal@cse.usc.edu; tel: 213-740-6505)

Partners:
None

Background:
Most modern medium and large scale systems end up using a number of third party software in terms of legacy software, or commercial off the shelf software (COTS). This reuse, which may be beneficial to the system in an early stage usually, causes a large number of maintenance issues, especially in the case of moderate and large organizations like USC Information Services Division. In cases where one software is dependent on other, the former may fail due to upgrades, removal or configuration modifications on the latter. For e.g. an upgrade of Java Virtual Machine caused the Rational Clearcase system in the ISD laboratories to fail.

Problem:
Build an information system tool that maintains information of all inter-software dependencies within an organization to prevent such errors.

Constraints:
None specified

Desired Deliverables:
None specified