Static Analysis Best Practices

Arthur Hicken

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Networking Dinner @ 5:45; and Chapter Business @ 6:45; Program @ 7:00 PM

At Countrywide, 2900 Madera, Simi Valley, CA 93065

Static analysis is one of the most under-utilized techniques within the software development industry. By automatically checking whether code complies with coding standards, static analysis tools can help developers:

• Detect bugs or potential bugs that impact reliability, security, and performance.
• Enforce organizational design guidelines and specifications (application-specific, use-specific, or platform-specific) and error-prevention guidelines abstracted from known specific bugs.
• Improve code maintainability by improving class design and code organization.
• Enhance code readability by applying common formatting, naming, and other stylistic conven­tions.

Yet many teams fail to achieve these benefits from their static analysis tools. Problems typically stem from having poorly-defined standards; inflexible and poorly-automated tools; poor integration with the development process and development tools; inconsistent use and application of the standards; a poorly-executed deployment strategy that overwhelms already beleaguered development teams; and so on.

Arthur Hicken is a deployment manager at Parasoft and has been involved in managing Parasoft's corporate Web site since the inception of the World Wide Web and has developed on-line purchasing and product evaluation capabilities, as well as technology that ties standard databases and data source to Web based applications. Mr. Hicken has also worked on preparing a consumer based Internet site for the wireless Web. Mr. Hicken has worked closely in implementing Automated Error Prevention (AEP) software solutions to Parasoft's Enterprise Corporations He has taught at College of DuPage in Illinois as well as developed and conducted numerous technical training courses at Parasoft. He has been quoted in Business 2.0, Internet Week, and NET news.com regarding Web site quality issues.