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Decomposing class responsibilities using distance-based method similarity

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Abstract

Cohesion is a design quality that has a great impact on the posterior development and maintenance. As software evolves, the cohesion of the system becomes weaker due to the changes introduced during evolution. Over evolution, a single responsibility class may be unintentionally assigned other responsibilities, which makes the class less cohesive and more complex and consequently increases the complexity of the entire system. There has been much work on decomposing class responsibilities based on internal class relationships such as method-attribute referencing and internal method calls. However, object-oriented systems involve significant external class relationships carrying important behavioral semantics, which should be taken into account in identifying class responsibilities. In this paper, we present a novel approach for identifying and decomposing classes responsibilities based on method similarity using both internal and external class relationships.We extend the existing work for measuring similarity of internal class relationships and present a distance-based method for measuring external class relationships. We evaluate the approach using three open source applications — JMeter, JHotDraw, and ArgoUML. The evaluation shows that the presented approach improves precision over the existing work. We validate the results using independent samples T-test and ANOVA applied to a set of hypotheses. The validation confirms that the results are statistically significant.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, 48309, USA

    Junha Lee

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, 48309, USA

    Dae-Kyoo Kim

  3. Department of Software Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Chonju, 561–756, South Korea

    Suntae Kim

  4. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, 121–741, South Korea

    Sooyong Park

Authors
  1. Junha Lee
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  2. Dae-Kyoo Kim
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  3. Suntae Kim
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  4. Sooyong Park
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suntae Kim.

Additional information

Junha Lee is a post-doctor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Oakland University, USA. He received the PhD in computer science from Sogang University, South Korea in 2014. During his PhD work, he worked as a senior constant at Software Engineering Expert Group, South Korea from 2010 to 2012, and as a software architect at Unmanned Vehicle Team of Sogang University. His research focuses on software maintenance, adoptive software, and unmanned autonomous vehicle.

Dae-Kyoo Kim is an associate professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Oakland University, USA. He received the PhD in computer science from Colorado State University, USA in 2004. During his PhD work, he worked as a technical specialist at NASA/Ames Research Center in 2003. From 1997 to 2000, he worked as a senior software engineer at McHugh Software International developing logistics systems. He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society. His research interests include UML modeling, smart grid, design pattern formalization, model refactoring, software architecture modeling, access control modeling, and software process.

Suntae Kim is an associate professor of the Department of Software Engineering at Chonbuk National University, South Korea. He received the PhD degree in computer science and engineering from Sogang University, South Korea in 2010. He worked in Software Craft Corporation Limited, as a senior consultant and engineer for financial enterprise systems during 2002–2004. He developed Android based smart TV middleware from 2009 to 2010. His research focuses on software architecture, design patterns, requirements engineering, and source code mining.

Sooyong Park is a professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Sogang University, South Korea. He received his PhD degree in information technology from George Mason University, USA. His research focuses on financial technology, internet of things and software dynamic analysis.

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Lee, J., Kim, DK., Kim, S. et al. Decomposing class responsibilities using distance-based method similarity. Front. Comput. Sci. 10, 612–630 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-5001-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-015-5001-5

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