Supplementary Material - Uncovering the Effects of Quantum Computing on Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping

This is the supplementary material regarding:  “On the Influence of Quantum Computing on Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping”, the idea being to make it possible to reproduce the methodology applied in the Systematic Mapping (SM) used in the study. It consists of:

Spreadsheet with the data of the papers selected in each step of the filtering phase of the SM development

Fluxogram detailing the Methodology of the SM step-by-step

Objectives

The main objective of the SM was to provide a detailed analysis on how quantum computing has affected four software engineering topics: Software Testing and Quality; Software Reengineering/Modernization; Software Modeling and Software Processes and Development Platforms

Based on the results of such Mapping, four research questions were defined realted to the quantum software engineering topic:

RQ1: How has QC impacted software testing and quality? This RQ aims to identify proposed methods for testing quantum software and topics related to quantum metrics and bugs.

RQ2: How has QC influenced software reengineering and modernization practices? This study seeks to analyze the treatment of reverse engineering and refactorings within this context.

RQ3: How is quantum software modeled? This research aims to investigate the impact of QC on modeling languages and the granularity level used.

RQ4: How have development processes and platforms been shaped by QC? The goal is to assess the current maturity of processes and platforms for QC.

Preparation

In this part we outline the resources, digital libraries, the search string and inclusion and exclusion criteria used in this SM on the influence of quantum computing on software engineering.

The platform used to manage the articles and define the search string and inclusion and exclusion criteria was Parsifal. In this process articles were sourced from : ACM Digital; IEEE Digital Library; Science Direct and Scopus.

A search string was employed in each digital library, adapted to the syntax of each of them, while encompassing the time frame from 01/2018 to 06/2023, with the Base Search String being:

(“Software Model” OR “Software Engineering” OR “Software Development” OR “Software Lifecycle” OR “Software Development Methodologies” OR “Software Project Management” OR “Testing” OR “Design Pattern” OR “Reengineering” OR “Reverse Engineering” OR “Metrics” OR “Service-Oriented”) AND (“Quantum Software” OR “Quantum Programming” OR “Quantum Computing” OR “Quantum Software Development” OR “Quantum Subroutine” OR “Quantum Program”)

Where the upper part includes terms related to software engineering and the lower part covers the quantum terms.

Another important task was to define inclusion and exclusion criteria for filtering the studies, being them:

Inclusion Criteria

The study is published in English.

The content of the study is related to the topic being analyzed.

Exclusion Criteria

The study is not available

The study is duplicated

The study is not primary study (surveys, systematic reviews/mappings, talks, proceedings, etc)

The content of the study is not related to the theme or it is too superficial.

The content of the study was updated in a next more-complete version. When the authors published a new and more complete version of the same content, we remove the previous paper.

Conduction

During the conduction of the papers filtering process there were four stages to which the set of papers were applied to until reaching the final set:

First stage: Removal of every paper that was duplicated, leaving only one instance of each paper.

Second stage: Removal of papers that are not a primary study.

Third stage: Removal of papers which keywords, title and abstract are not related to the topics of the Systematic Mapping;

Fourth stage: Removal of papers whose content is not related to the topics of the Systematic Mapping.