The application of intelligent and soft-computing techniques to software engineering problems: a review

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the work done during 1990-2008 in the application of intelligent techniques to solve software engineering (SE) problems. The review is categorised according to the type of intelligent technique applied viz. (1) neural networks (NNs), (2) fuzzy logic, (3) genetic algorithm, (4) decision tree, (5) case base reasoning and (6) other techniques subsuming soft computing. Further, the source of the data set and the results whenever available are also provided. We find that NNs is the most often used non-parametric method in SE and there exists immense scope to apply other equally famous methods such as fuzzy logic, decision trees and rough sets. The review is going to be useful to researchers as a starting point as it provides important future research directions. For practitioners also, the review would be useful. This would eventually lead to better decision making in SE thereby ensuring better, more reliable and cost effective software products. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mohanty, R., Ravi, V. and Patra, M.R. (2010) 'The application of intelligent and soft-computing techniques to software engineering problems: a review', Int. J. Information and Decision Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.233-272.