Identifying Extract Class refactoring opportunities using structural and semantic cohesion measures

Approaches for improving class cohesion identify refactoring opportunities using metrics that capture structural relationships between the methods of a class, e.g., attribute references. Semantic metrics, e.g., C3 metric, have also been proposed to measure class cohesion, as they seem to complement structural metrics. However, until now semantic relationships between methods have not been used to identify refactoring opportunities. In this paper we propose an Extract Class refactoring method based on graph theory that exploits structural and semantic relationships between methods. The empirical evaluation of the proposed approach highlighted the benefits provided by the combination of semantic and structural measures and the potential usefulness of the proposed method as a feature for software development environments.     

An object-oriented high-level design-based class cohesion metric

ContextClass cohesion is an important object-oriented software quality attribute. Assessing class cohesion during the object-oriented design phase is one important way to obtain more comprehensible and maintainable software. In practice, assessing and controlling cohesion in large systems implies measuring it automatically. One issue with the few existing cohesion metrics targeted at the high-level design phase is that they are not based on realistic assumptions and do not fulfill expected mathematical properties.ObjectiveThis paper proposes a High-Level Design (HLD) class cohesion metric, which is based on realistic assumptions, complies with expected mathematical properties, and can be used to automatically assess design quality at early stages using UML diagrams.MethodThe notion of similarity between pairs of methods and pairs of attribute types in a class is introduced and used as a basis to introduce a novel high-level design class cohesion metric. The metric considers method–method, attribute–attribute, and attribute–method direct and transitive interactions. We validate this Similarity-based Class Cohesion (SCC) metric theoretically and empirically. The former includes a careful study of the mathematical properties of the metric whereas the latter investigates, using four open source software systems and 10 cohesion metrics, whether SCC is based on realistic assumptions and whether it better explains the presence of faults, from a statistical standpoint, than other comparable cohesion metrics, considered individually or in combination.ResultsResults confirm that SCC is based on clearly justified theoretical principles, relies on realistic assumptions, and is an early indicator of quality (fault occurrences).ConclusionIt is concluded that SCC is both theoretically valid and supported by empirical evidence. It is a better alternative to measure class cohesion than existing HLD class cohesion metrics.     

Identifying extract class refactoring opportunities for internetware

The quality of internetware software is significantly associated with class structure.As software evolves,changes often introduce many unrelated responsibilities to the same classes or distribute tightly-related methods in different classes.These changes make the classes difficult to understand and maintain.Extract class refactoring is an effective technique to improve the quality of software structure by decomposing unrelated methods in one class to create new classes or extracting tightly-related methods from different classes.In this paper,we propose a novel approach for class extraction from internetware source codes.This approach leverages a community structure detection technique to partition software into clusters and extracts classes from the resulting clusters.Our experimental results,which investigate the public well-known internetware PKUAS,indicate that:(1)the proposed approach is much faster than existing search-based clustering approaches(Hillclimbing and Genetic algorithm)and is thus applicable for large-scale internetware;(2)the proposed approach can identify meaningful class extractions for internetware;and(3)Extract Class refactoring candidates identified by the proposed approach significantly improve class cohesion of internetware.     

Identification of Move Method Refactoring Opportunities

Placement of attributes/methods within classes in an object-oriented system is usually guided by conceptual criteria and aided by appropriate metrics. Moving state and behavior between classes can help reduce coupling and increase cohesion, but it is nontrivial to identify where such refactorings should be applied. In this paper, we propose a methodology for the identification of Move Method refactoring opportunities that constitute a way for solving many common Feature Envy bad smells. An algorithm that employs the notion of distance between system entities (attributes/methods) and classes extracts a list of behavior-preserving refactorings based on the examination of a set of preconditions. In practice, a software system may exhibit such problems in many different places. Therefore, our approach measures the effect of all refactoring suggestions based on a novel Entity Placement metric that quantifies how well entities have been placed in system classes. The proposed methodology can be regarded as a semi-automatic approach since the designer will eventually decide whether a suggested refactoring should be applied or not based on conceptual or other design quality criteria. The evaluation of the proposed approach has been performed considering qualitative, metric, conceptual, and efficiency aspects of the suggested refactorings in a number of open-source projects.     

The impact of accounting for special methods in the measurement of object-oriented class cohesion on refactoring and fault prediction activities

Class cohesion is a key attribute that is used to assess the design quality of a class, and it refers to the extent to which the attributes and methods of the class are related. Typically, classes contain special types of methods, such as constructors, destructors, and access methods. Each of these special methods has its own characteristics, which can artificially affect the class cohesion measurement. Several metrics have been proposed in the literature to indicate class cohesion during high- or low-level design phases. The impact of accounting for special methods in cohesion measurement has not been addressed for most of these metrics. This paper empirically explores the impact of including or excluding special methods on cohesion measurements that were performed using 20 existing class cohesion metrics. The empirical study applies the metrics that were considered to five open-source systems under four different scenarios, including (1) considering all special methods, (2) ignoring only constructors, (3) ignoring only access methods, and (4) ignoring all special methods. This study empirically explores the impact of including special methods in cohesion measurement for two applications of interest to software practitioners, including refactoring and predicting faulty classes. The results of the empirical studies show that the cohesion values for most of the metrics considered differ significantly across the four scenarios and that this difference significantly affects the refactoring decisions, but does not significantly affect the abilities of the metrics to predict faulty classes.     

Client-based cohesion metrics for Java programs

One purpose of software metrics is to measure the quality of programs. The results can be for example used to predict maintenance costs or improve code quality. An emerging view is that if software metrics are going to be used to improve quality, they must help in finding code that should be refactored. Often refactoring or applying a design pattern is related to the role of the class to be refactored. In client-based metrics, a project gives the class a context. These metrics measure how a class is used by other classes in the context. We present a new client-based metric LCIC (Lack of Coherence in Clients), which analyses if the class being measured has a coherent set of roles in the program. Interfaces represent the roles of classes. If a class does not have a coherent set of roles, it should be refactored, or a new interface should be defined for the class.We have implemented a tool for measuring the metric LCIC for Java projects in the Eclipse environment. We calculated LCIC values for classes of several open source projects. We compare these results with results of other related metrics, and inspect the measured classes to find out what kind of refactorings are needed. We also analyse the relation of different design patterns and refactorings to our metric. Our experiments reveal the usefulness of client-based metrics to improve the quality of code.     

检测JavaScript类的内聚耦合Code Smell

Code Smell是软件程序中存在不良设计和不良实现的征兆.正确地检测和识别Code Smell可以指导软件重构,提高软件的可用性和可靠性.通过Code Smell的度量指标,可以量化软件的设计问题.JavaScript已成为最常用的编程语言之一,类是JavaScript的设计模式,优秀类的设计体现为高内聚和低耦合.现有关于JavaScript内聚耦合的Code Smell研究均在微观的层面,即函数和语句上进行.它们可以提供程序实现的重构建议,但无法分析内聚耦合相关的软件系统设计问题.针对FE、DC和Blob这3种类的内聚耦合Code Smell,提出一种JavaScript类的内聚耦合Code Smell检测方法JS4C.该方法基于静态分析,同时适用于客户端和服务端程序.它通过遍历软件系统中所有的类,利用源程序的文本相似度特征和结构特征,识别Code Smell并检测其强度.在结构特征检测中,JS4C使用了经扩展的对象类型推断及非严格的耦合分散度度量法NSCDISP,有效地降低了解释型语言的静态分析过程中,类型信息缺失对检测产生的影响.实验通过对6个开源项目的分析表明,JS4C对内聚耦合设计问题有良好的检测效果.     

面向对象软件内聚度度量数据分布的实证研究

度量数据的分布信息对于理解和使用面向对象软件度量有重要意义.人们对面向对象软件规模度量、耦合度度量乃至继承维度的度量数据的分布都有研究,但对除内聚度缺乏度LCOM之外的内聚度度量数据的分布却缺乏研究.已有的实证研究表明,LCOM并不是好的内聚度度量,因此探讨其他内聚度度量数据分布很有必要.对包括内聚度缺乏度、基于连通性的内聚度度量和基于相似性的内聚度度量总共17个度量指标在112个Java开源软件项目的分布情况进行实证研究,对每个度量指标的每个项目数据使用幂律分布和对数正态分布进行拟合,并使用荟萃分析方法对拟合结果进行了分析.实证研究结果表明,非规范化的内聚度量可使用对数正态分布和幂律分布拟合,但规范化的基于相似性的内聚度量（包括CC、LSCC、SCOM和SCC）需要排除方法数小于等于1或字段数为0的特殊类才能使用对数正态分布拟合,而基于连通性的内聚度度量（包括TCC、LCC、DCD和DCI）则只有对应的非规范化版本的数据才符合对数正态分布或幂律分布.实证研究可帮助人们更好地理解和使用内聚度度量,特别是可以帮助人们如何利用已有的方法确定内聚度度量的阈值.     

Software metrics using a metasystem approach to software specification

This article investigates how software metrics can be defined as part of a metasystem approach to the development of software specifications environments. Environment transformation language (ETL) is used to define metric computations. In our approach, metrics applicable to a particular specification environment (e.g., a data flow diagram environment) are defined in conjunction with a formal definition of that environment as given in environment definition language (EDL). The goal is to support a metric-driven approach to software development by incorporating, with relative ease, the metric computation into the software specification environment. As representative examples, metrics for data flow diagrams, structure charts, and resource flow graphs are described and analyzed. We demonstrate how an analyst, interacting with the system, can use metrics to improve the quality of the deliverables.     

完善验证的凝聚力测量方法以提升软件品质

无适当使用软件测量将可能引起软件低品质且高成本的窘态.凝聚力是软件品质重要因子之一如同维护度,可靠度和再利用度.软件模组品质的优劣必影响整体系统之品质的优劣.为了设计和维护高品质软件,软件专案经理人和软件工程师无可避免需引用软件凝聚力测量以衡量和产生高品质软件.提出以活路跃变量及视觉化变量纵距为分析基础之功能导向凝聚力测量方法.进而,以一系列实际案例来作实验验证,并以一组性质来作理论辩证所提的测量方法.因此一经完善定义,完善实验和完善辩证之凝聚力测量方法被提出用于当软件凝聚力强度的指标和因此增进软件品质.这凝聚力测量方法能容易嵌入CASE以帮助软件工程师确保软件品质.     

The ability of object-oriented metrics to predict change-proneness: a meta-analysis

Many studies have investigated the relationships between object-oriented (OO) metrics and change-proneness and conclude that OO metrics are able to predict the extent of change of a class across the versions of a system. However, there is a need to re-examine this subject for two reasons. First, most studies only analyze a small number of OO metrics and, therefore, it is not clear whether this conclusion is applicable to most, if not all, OO metrics. Second, most studies only uses relatively few systems to investigate the relationships between OO metrics and change-proneness and, therefore, it is not clear whether this conclusion can be generalized to other systems. In this paper, based on 102 Java systems, we employ statistical meta-analysis techniques to investigate the ability of 62 OO metrics to predict change-proneness. In our context, a class which is changed in the next version of a system is called change-prone and not change-prone otherwise. The investigated OO metrics cover four metric dimensions, including 7 size metrics, 18 cohesion metrics, 20 coupling metrics, and 17 inheritance metrics. We use AUC (the area under a relative operating characteristic, ROC) to evaluate the predictive effectiveness of OO metrics. For each OO metric, we first compute AUCs and the corresponding variances for individual systems. Then, we employ a random-effect model to compute the average AUC over all systems. Finally, we perform a sensitivity analysis to investigate whether the AUC result from the random-effect model is robust to the data selection bias in this study. Our results from random-effect models reveal that: (1) size metrics exhibit moderate or almost moderate ability in discriminating between change-prone and not change-prone classes; (2) coupling and cohesion metrics generally have a lower predictive ability compared to size metrics; and (3) inheritance metrics have a poor ability to discriminate between change-prone and not change-prone classes. Our results from sensitivity analyses show that these conclusions reached are not substantially influenced by the data selection bias.     

On the use of many quality attributes for software refactoring: a many-objective search-based software engineering approach

Search-based software engineering (SBSE) solutions are still not scalable enough to handle high-dimensional objectives space. The majority of existing work treats software engineering problems from a single or bi-objective point of view, where the main goal is to maximize or minimize one or two objectives. However, most software engineering problems are naturally complex in which many conflicting objectives need to be optimized. Software refactoring is one of these problems involving finding a compromise between several quality attributes to improve the quality of the system while preserving the behavior. To this end, we propose a novel representation of the refactoring problem as a many-objective one where every quality attribute to improve is considered as an independent objective to be optimized. In our approach based on the recent NSGA-III algorithm, the refactoring solutions are evaluated using a set of 8 distinct objectives. We evaluated this approach on one industrial project and seven open source systems. We compared our findings to: several other many-objective techniques (IBEA, MOEA/D, GrEA, and DBEA-Eps), an existing multi-objective approach a mono-objective technique and an existing refactoring technique not based on heuristic search. Statistical analysis of our experiments over 31 runs shows the efficiency of our approach.     

Using the Conceptual Cohesion of Classes for Fault Prediction in Object-Oriented Systems

High cohesion is a desirable property of software as it positively impacts understanding, reuse, and maintenance. Currently proposed measures for cohesion in Object-Oriented (OO) software reflect particular interpretations of cohesion and capture different aspects of it. Existing approaches are largely based on using the structural information from the source code, such as attribute references, in methods to measure cohesion. This paper proposes a new measure for the cohesion of classes in OO software systems based on the analysis of the unstructured information embedded in the source code, such as comments and identifiers. The measure, named the Conceptual Cohesion of Classes (C3), is inspired by the mechanisms used to measure textual coherence in cognitive psychology and computational linguistics. This paper presents the principles and the technology that stand behind the C3 measure. A large case study on three open source software systems is presented which compares the new measure with an extensive set of existing metrics and uses them to construct models that predict software faults. The case study shows that the novel measure captures different aspects of class cohesion compared to any of the existing cohesion measures. In addition, combining C3 with existing structural cohesion metrics proves to be a better predictor of faulty classes when compared to different combinations of structural cohesion metrics.     

Exception handling refactorings: Directed by goals and driven by bug fixing

Exception handling design can improve robustness, which is an important quality attribute of software. However, exception handling design remains one of the less understood and considered parts in software development. In addition, like most software design problems, even if developers are requested to design with exception handling beforehand, it is very difficult to get the right design at the first shot. Therefore, improving exception handling design after software is constructed is necessary. This paper applies refactoring to incrementally improve exception handling design. We first establish four exception handling goals to stage the refactoring actions. Next, we introduce exception handling smells that hinder the achievement of the goals and propose exception handling refactorings to eliminate the smells. We suggest exception handling refactoring is best driven by bug fixing because it provides measurable quality improvement results that explicitly reveal the benefits of refactoring. We conduct a case study with the proposed refactorings on a real world banking application and provide a cost-effectiveness analysis. The result shows that our approach can effectively improve exception handling design, enhance software robustness, and save maintenance cost. Our approach simplifies the process of applying big exception handling refactoring by dividing the process into clearly defined intermediate milestones that are easily exercised and verified. The approach can be applied in general software development and in legacy system maintenance.     

An efficient approach to identify multiple and independent Move Method refactoring candidates

ContextApplication of a refactoring operation creates a new set of dependency in the revised design as well as a new set of further refactoring candidates. In the studies of stepwise refactoring recommendation approaches, applying one refactoring at a time has been used, but is inefficient because the identification of the best candidate in each iteration of refactoring identification process is computation-intensive. Therefore, it is desirable to accurately identify multiple and independent candidates to enhance efficiency of refactoring process.ObjectiveWe propose an automated approach to identify multiple refactorings that can be applied simultaneously to maximize the maintainability improvement of software. Our approach can attain the same degree of maintainability enhancement as the method of the refactoring identification of the single best one, but in fewer iterations (lower computation cost).MethodThe concept of maximal independent set (MIS) enables us to identify multiple refactoring operations that can be applied simultaneously. Each MIS contains a group of refactoring candidates that neither affect (i.e., enable or disable) nor influence maintainability on each other. Refactoring effect delta table quantifies the degree of maintainability improvement each elementary candidate. For each iteration of the refactoring identification process, multiple refactorings that best improve maintainability are selected among sets of refactoring candidates (MISs).ResultsWe demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach by simulating the refactoring operations on several large-scale open source projects such as jEdit, Columba, and JGit. The results show that our proposed approach can improve maintainability by the same degree or to a better extent than the competing method, choosing one refactoring candidate at a time, in a significantly smaller number of iterations. Thus, applying multiple refactorings at a time is both effective and efficient.ConclusionOur proposed approach helps improve the maintainability as well as the productivity of refactoring identification.     

A robust multi-objective approach to balance severity and importance of refactoring opportunities

Refactoring large systems involves several sources of uncertainty related to the severity levels of code smells to be corrected and the importance of the classes in which the smells are located. Both severity and importance of identified refactoring opportunities (e.g. code smells) are difficult to estimate. In fact, due to the dynamic nature of software development, these values cannot be accurately determined in practice, leading to refactoring sequences that lack robustness. In addition, some code fragments can contain severe quality issues but they are not playing an important role in the system. To address this problem, we introduced a multi-objective robust model, based on NSGA-II, for the software refactoring problem that tries to find the best trade-off between three objectives to maximize: quality improvements, severity and importance of refactoring opportunities to be fixed. We evaluated our approach using 8 open source systems and one industrial project, and demonstrated that it is significantly better than state-of-the-art refactoring approaches in terms of robustness in all the experiments based on a variety of real-world scenarios. Our suggested refactoring solutions were found to be comparable in terms of quality to those suggested by existing approaches, better prioritization of refactoring opportunities and to carry an acceptable robustness price.     

A test case refactoring approach for pattern-based software development

In the current trend, Extreme Programing methodology is widely adopted by small and medium-sized projects for dealing with rapidly or indefinite changing requirements. Test-first strategy and code refactoring are the important practices of Extreme Programing for rapid development and quality support. The test-first strategy emphasizes that test cases are designed before system implementation to keep the correctness of artifacts during software development; whereas refactoring is the removal of “bad smell” code for improving quality without changing its semantics. However, the test-first strategy may conflict with code refactoring in the sense that the original test cases may be broken or inefficient for testing programs, which are revised by code refactoring. In general, the developers revise the test cases manually since it is not complicated. However, when the developers perform a pattern-based refactoring to improve the quality, the effort of revising the test cases is much more than that in simple code refactoring. In our observation, a pattern-based refactoring is composed of many simple and atomic code refactorings. If we have the composition relationship and the mapping rules between code refactoring and test case refactoring, we may infer a test case revision guideline in pattern-based refactoring. Based on this idea, in this research, we propose a four-phase approach to guide the construction of the test case refactoring for design patterns. We also introduce our approach by using some well-known design patterns and evaluate its feasibility by means of test coverage.     

Search-Based Cost-Effective Software Remodularization

Software modularization is a technique used to divide a software system into independent modules (packages) that are expected to be cohesive and loosely coupled. However, as software systems evolve over time to meet new requirements, their modularizations become complex and gradually loose their quality. Thus, it is challenging to automatically optimize the classes’ distribution in packages, also known as remodularization. To alleviate this issue, we introduce a new approach to optimize software modularization by moving classes to more suitable packages. In addition to improving design quality and preserving semantic coherence, our approach takes into consideration the refactoring effort as an objective in itself while optimizing software modularization. We adapt the Elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) of Deb et al. to find the best sequence of refactorings that 1) maximize structural quality, 2) maximize semantic cohesiveness of packages (evaluated by a semantic measure based on WordNet), and 3) minimize the refactoring effort. We report the results of an evaluation of our approach using open-source projects, and we show that our proposal is able to produce a coherent and useful sequence of recommended refactorings both in terms of quality metrics and from the developer’s points of view.     

Dynamic profiling-based approach to identifying cost-effective refactorings

ContextObject-oriented software undergoes continuous changes—changes often made without consideration of the software’s overall structure and design rationale. Hence, over time, the design quality of the software degrades causing software aging or software decay. Refactoring offers a means of restructuring software design to improve maintainability. In practice, efforts to invest in refactoring are restricted; therefore, the problem calls for a method for identifying cost-effective refactorings that efficiently improve maintainability. Cost-effectiveness of applied refactorings can be explained as maintainability improvement over invested refactoring effort (cost). For the system, the more cost-effective refactorings are applied, the greater maintainability would be improved. There have been several studies of supporting the arguments that changes are more prone to occur in the pieces of codes more frequently utilized by users; hence, applying refactorings in these parts would fast improve maintainability of software. For this reason, dynamic information is needed for identifying the entities involved in given scenarios/functions of a system, and within these entities, refactoring candidates need to be extracted.ObjectiveThis paper provides an automated approach to identifying cost-effective refactorings using dynamic information in object-oriented software.MethodTo perform cost-effective refactoring, refactoring candidates are extracted in a way that reduces dependencies; these are referred to as the dynamic information. The dynamic profiling technique is used to obtain the dependencies of entities based on dynamic method calls. Based on those dynamic dependencies, refactoring-candidate extraction rules are defined, and a maintainability evaluation function is established. Then, refactoring candidates are extracted and assessed using the defined rules and the evaluation function, respectively. The best refactoring (i.e., that which most improves maintainability) is selected from among refactoring candidates, then refactoring candidate extraction and assessment are re-performed to select the next refactoring, and the refactoring identification process is iterated until no more refactoring candidates for improving maintainability are found.ResultsWe evaluate our proposed approach in three open-source projects. The first results show that dynamic information is helpful in identifying cost-effective refactorings that fast improve maintainability; and, considering dynamic information in addition to static information provides even more opportunities to identify cost-effective refactorings. The second results show that dynamic information is helpful in extracting refactoring candidates in the classes where real changes had occurred; in addition, the results also offer the promising support for the contention that using dynamic information helps to extracting refactoring candidates from highly-ranked frequently changed classes.ConclusionOur proposed approach helps to identify cost-effective refactorings and supports an automated refactoring identification process.     

An expert system for determining candidate software classes for refactoring

In the lifetime of a software product, development costs are only the tip of the iceberg. Nearly 90% of the cost is maintenance due to error correction, adaptation and mainly enhancements. As Lehman and Belady [Lehman, M. M., & Belady, L. A. (1985). Program evolution: Processes of software change. Academic Press Professional.] state that software will become increasingly unstructured as it is changed. One way to overcome this problem is refactoring. Refactoring is an approach which reduces the software complexity by incrementally improving internal software quality. Our motivation in this research is to detect the classes that need to be rafactored by analyzing the code complexity. We propose a machine learning based model to predict classes to be refactored. We use Weighted Naïve Bayes with InfoGain heuristic as the learner and we conducted experiments with metric data that we collected from the largest GSM operator in Turkey. Our results showed that we can predict 82% of the classes that need refactoring with 13% of manual inspection effort on the average.