Editing Program slicing (section)

== Lightweight forward static slicing approach ==
A very fast and scalable, yet slightly less accurate, slicing approach is extremely useful for a number of reasons. Developers will have a very low cost and practical means to estimate the impact of a change within minutes versus days. This is very important for planning the implementation of new features and understanding how a change is related to other parts of the system. It will also provide an inexpensive test to determine if a full, more expensive, analysis of the system is warranted. A fast slicing approach will open up new avenues of research in metrics and the mining of histories based on slicing. That is, slicing can now be conducted on very large systems and on entire version histories in very practical time frames. This opens the door to a number of experiments and empirical investigations previously too costly to undertake.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Alomari|first1=Hakam W.|last2=Collard|first2=Michael L.|last3=Maletic|first3=Jonathan I.|last4=Alhindawi|first4=Nouh|last5=Meqdadi|first5=Omar|date=2014-05-19|title=srcSlice: very efficient and scalable forward static slicing|journal=Journal of Software: Evolution and Process|language=en|volume=26|issue=11|pages=931–961|doi=10.1002/smr.1651|issn=2047-7473|citeseerx=10.1.1.641.8891|s2cid=18520643 }}</ref>