A Concept Study for a National Software Engineering Database

Substantial segments of the software engineering community perceive a need for high-quality software engineering data at a national level. A national software engineering database has been proposed as one way to satisfy this need. But is such a database feasible and can it really satisfy these needs? This report provides information obtained from an informal survey of members of the software engineering community about a national database. The survey served as a means of getting a sense of the expectations that are to be met by building a national database, and provided the opportunity to learn from the experiences of those surveyed about data collection and use. The report summarizes this material in a manner that is informative and expository rather than prescriptive.