Search-based refactoring for software maintenance

The high cost of software maintenance could be reduced by automatically improving the design of object-oriented programs without altering their behaviour. We have constructed a software tool capable of refactoring object-oriented programs to conform more closely to a given design quality model, by f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of systems and software Vol. 81; no. 4; pp. 502 - 516
Main Authors O’Keeffe, Mark, Ó Cinnéide, Mel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Elsevier Inc 01.04.2008
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
Subjects
Automated design improvement
Flexibility
Object oriented programming
Refactoring
Search-based software engineering
Software engineering
Studies
Systems design
Refactoring
Automated design improvement
Search-based software engineering
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Summary:The high cost of software maintenance could be reduced by automatically improving the design of object-oriented programs without altering their behaviour. We have constructed a software tool capable of refactoring object-oriented programs to conform more closely to a given design quality model, by formulating the task as a search problem in the space of alternative designs. This novel approach is validated by two case studies, where programs are automatically refactored to increase flexibility, reusability and understandability as defined by a contemporary quality model. Both local and simulated annealing searches were found to be effective in this task.
ISSN:0164-1212
1873-1228
DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2007.06.003