Connascence

About: Connascence is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 187 publications have been published within this topic receiving 4624 citations.

UMLDiff: an algorithm for object-oriented design differencing

Abstract: This paper presents UMLDiff, an algorithm for automatically detecting structural changes between the designs of subsequent versions of object-oriented software. It takes as input two class models of a Java software system, reverse engineered from two corresponding code versions. It produces as output a change tree, i.e., a tree of structural changes, that reports the differences between the two design versions in terms of (a) additions, removals, moves, renamings of packages, classes, interfaces, fields and methods, (b) changes to their attributes, and (c) changes of the dependencies among these entities. UMLDiff produces an accurate report of the design evolution of the software system, and enables subsequent design-evolution analyses from multiple perspectives in support of various evolution activities. UMLDiff and the analyses it enables can assist software engineers in their tasks of understanding the rationale of design evolution of the software system and planning future development and maintenance activities. We evaluate UMLDiff's correctness and robustness through a real-world case stud.

Finding refactorings via change metrics

Abstract: Reverse engineering is the process of uncovering the design and the design rationale from a functioning software system Reverse engineering is an integral part of any successful software system, because changing requirements lead to implementations that drift from their original design In contrast to traditional reverse engineering techniques ---which analyse a single snapshot of a system--- we focus the reverse engineering effort by determining where the implementation has changed Since changes of object-oriented software are often phrased in terms of refactorings, we propose a set of heuristics for detecting refactorings by applying lightweight, object-oriented metrics to successive versions of a software system We validate our approach with three separate case studies of mature object-oriented software systems for which multiple versions are available The case studies suggest that the heuristics support the reverse engineering process by focusing attention on the relevant parts of a software system

Measurement and quality in object-oriented design

Abstract: In order to support the maintenance of object-oriented software systems, the quality of their design must be evaluated using adequate quantification means. In spite of the current extensive use of metrics, if used in isolation, metrics are oftentimes too fine grained to quantify comprehensively an investigated aspect of the design. To help the software engineer detect and localize design problems, the novel detection strategy mechanism is defined so that deviations from good-design principles and heuristics are quantised inform of metrics-based rules. Using detection strategies an engineer can directly localize classes or methods affected by a particular design flaw (e.g. God Class), rather than having to infer the real design problem from a large set of abnormal metric values. In order to reach the ultimate goal of bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative statements about design, the dissertation proposes a novel type of quality model, called factor-strategy. In contrast to traditional quality models that express the goodness of design in terms of a set of metrics, this novel model relates explicitly the quality of a design to its conformance with a set of essential principles, rules and heuristics, which are quantified using detection strategies.