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Title
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Automatic identification of key classes in a software system using webmining techniques
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Author
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Abstract
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| Software engineers new to a project are often stuck sorting through hundreds of classes in order to find those few classes that offer a significant insight into the inner workings of the software project. To help stimulate this process, we propose a technique that can identify the most important classes in a system or the key classes of that system. Software engineers can use these classes to focus their understanding efforts when starting to work on a new software project. Those key classes are typically characterized with having a lot of control within the application. In order to find these controlling classes, we present a detection approach that is based on dynamic coupling and webmining. We demonstrate the potential of our technique using two open-source software systems that have a rich documentation set. During the case studies we use dynamically gathered coupling information that vary between a number of coupling metrics. The case studies show that we are able to retrieve 90% of the classes deemed important by the original maintainers of the systems, while maintaining a level of precision of around 50%. |
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Language
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English
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Source (journal)
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Journal of software maintenance and evolution : research and practice. - Chichester, 2001 - 2011
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Publication
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Chichester
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2008
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ISSN
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1532-060X
[print]
1532-0618
[online]
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DOI
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10.1002/SMR.370
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Volume/pages
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20
:6
(2008)
, p. 387-417
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ISI
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000261810900001
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Full text (Publisher's DOI)
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