Software Review for the Software PointSamplingTool

Software Metadata:

• Name: The name of the software, e.g. “PointSamplingTool”.
• Short description: Summary of what the software does, e.g. “Comprehensive graphical tool for spatial data processing”.
• Reviewed version: The software version used for the review, e.g. “3.10.10 LTR”.
• Platform: (Operating) systems on which the software can be used, e.g. “Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD, Android”.
• Website: URL where further information can be found, e.g. https://qgis.org.
• Licensing: Software licence under which the software was published, e.g. “Open Source with GNU General Public License (GPL)”.
• Costs: If applicable, regular or one-off licence fees, e.g. “free of charge”.
• Input and output formats: The file formats the software can process, e.g. “geodatabases” (SpatiaLite, PostGIS, MSSQL, …), “web geodata services” (WMD/WMTS, Vector Tiles, XYZ Tiles, WFS, …), “geo-vector data formats” (ESRI Shapefile, Geopackage, . …), “geo-raster data formats” (GeoTIFF, …), “table data” (CSV, TXT, …) and other data types (for QGIS there are an unusually large number of data formats to consider, which would go beyond the scope here).

Use in archaeology and scientific purpose

• What task is the software trying to solve?

• How does the software solve a given (technical) task?

• How does the scientific workflow implemented in the software work?

• Is the claim to be able to answer a certain scientific question with the chosen workflow correct?

• Have the algorithms been implemented correctly?

• Are there any projects/application examples relevant to archaeology in which the reviewed software has already been used?

• In what form is the software published?

Usability and target group orientation

Installation

• How does the installation work and where is the software kept?

• Is it a stand-alone software or a web application?

• Are necessary requirements in terms of hardware and operating system clearly documented?

Interface

• Is the user interface suitable for the user group?

• Is use in Archaeology intended?

• Does the menu navigation follow certain de-facto standards?

• Is the programme multilingual, and in which languages is it offered?

• Are error messages easily understandable by reviewers?

Performance and Robustness

• Is the implementation performant?

• Is the software robust?

Help features, tutorials and community

• Are there enough tutorials for learning the software?

• Do test data sets exist for the software?

• Is further information on the software easy to find?

• Is the software supported by a community, and what proportion are classical and ancient studies scholars?

• Are there archaeological best practices or publications that refer to the reviewed software?

Data ingest, interoperability and programming interfaces

• Which data formats are read in and how?

• Which output data formats are supported?

• How can data be read in? Does the software allow batch processing?

• Is there an application programming interface (API)?

Conformity with regulations on data protection and data minimisation

• Does the software comply with the laws (e.g. on data protection, map displays, etc.) of the country of assignment?

• What data does the application store, for what purpose and for how long? Are data transferred to third parties?

Developer perspective

Documentation and tests

• Does a source code documentation exist and, if applicable, is an HTML variant of it available?

• Is the build process documented and, if applicable, automated by means of build scripts?

• Is the documentation up to date and does it address all functions of the programme?

• Is there developer documentation that promotes further software development?

• Does the source code contain software tests for testing core functions and demonstrating them to other developers?

• Is it made easy for the developer to test the software (e.g. virtual machine, Docker container, installer)?

• Are the developers readily accessible?

• Is the software being actively worked on?

• Is it possible to support software development?

Quality of implementation

• Does the implementation reflect the state of the art?

• Is Continuous Integration used to ensure implementation quality?