Researchers from SIG and the Universidade do Minho (Braga, Portugal) have proposed a pragmatic method to perform preliminary literature studies that helps in getting aquatinted with unknown fileds of science. The method uses Formal Concept Analysis to produce visual representations of the papers, their attributes and their relationships. It has different applications, such as preparing for literature surveys or related work analysis. This paper presents the method, explores its application to preparing for a literature survey on Software Architecture and discusses its benefits as well as its shortcomings.

Preparing for a Literature Survey of Software Architecture using Formal Concept Analysis
Luís Couto and José Nuno Oliveira (Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal), Miguel Ferreira and Eric Bouwers (Software Improvement Group, Amsterdam, Netherlands). Published in the Proceedings of the SQM 2011

Abstract: The scientific literature on Software Architecture (SA) is extensive and dense. With no preparation, surveying this literature can be a daunting task for novices in the field. This paper resorts to the technique of Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) in organizing and structuring such a body of knowledge.

We start by surveying a set of 38 papers bearing in mind the following questions: “What are the most supported definitions of software architecture?”, “What are the most popular research topics in software architecture?”, “What are the most relevant quality attributes of a software architecture?” and “What are the topics that researchers point out as being more interesting to explore in the future?”. To answer these questions we classify each paper with appropriate keywords and apply FCA to such a classification. FCA allows us to structure our survey in the form of lattices of concepts which give evidence of main relationships involved.
We believe our results will help in guiding a more compre- hensive, in-depth study of the field, to be carried out in the future.

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Preparing for a Literature Survey of Software Architecture using Formal Concept Analysis