Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization Using Reference Relations and Access Analysis

Noda, Kohei; Kobayashi, Takashi; Toda, Tatsuya; Atsumi, Noritoshi

doi:10.1109/compsac.2017.142

Cited by 12 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…After importance estimation, to visualize interactions related to core objects, we exploit the object grouping and visualization algorithm proposed in our previous work [20]. The algorithm takes our core identification result as its input.…”

Section: Object Grouping and Visualization Of Intergroup Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization by Analyzing Reference Relations and Dynamic Properties

Noda

Kobayashi

Atsumi

2018

IEICE Trans. Inf. & Syst.

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Kunihiro NODA†a) , Nonmember, Takashi KOBAYASHI †b) , and Noritoshi ATSUMI † †c) , Members SUMMARY Behaviors of an object-oriented system can be visualized as reverse-engineered sequence diagrams from execution traces. This approach is a valuable tool for program comprehension tasks. However, owing to the massiveness of information contained in an execution trace, a reverse-engineered sequence diagram is often afflicted by a scalability issue. To address this issue, many trace summarization techniques have been proposed. Most of the previous techniques focused on reducing the vertical size of the diagram. To cope with the scalability issue, decreasing the horizontal size of the diagram is also very important. Nonetheless, few studies have addressed this point; thus, there is a lot of needs for further development of horizontal summarization techniques. We present in this paper a method for identifying core objects for trace summarization by analyzing reference relations and dynamic properties. Visualizing only interactions related to core objects, we can obtain a horizontally compactified reverseengineered sequence diagram that contains system's key behaviors. To identify core objects, first, we detect and eliminate temporary objects that are trivial for a system by analyzing reference relations and lifetimes of objects. Then, estimating the importance of each non-trivial object based on their dynamic properties, we identify highly important ones (i.e., core objects). We implemented our technique in our tool and evaluated it by using traces from various open-source software systems. The results showed that our technique was much more effective in terms of the horizontal reduction of a reverse-engineered sequence diagram, compared with the state-of-theart trace summarization technique. The horizontal compression ratio of our technique was 134.6 on average, whereas that of the state-of-the-art technique was 11.5. The runtime overhead imposed by our technique was 167.6% on average. This overhead is relatively small compared with recent scalable dynamic analysis techniques, which shows the practicality of our technique. Overall, our technique can achieve a significant reduction of the horizontal size of a reverse-engineered sequence diagram with a small overhead and is expected to be a valuable tool for program comprehension.

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Section: Object Grouping and Visualization Of Intergroup Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper is an extended version of our previous work [20]. The main differences from our previous work are as follows:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization by Analyzing Reference Relations and Dynamic Properties

Noda

Kobayashi

Atsumi

2018

IEICE Trans. Inf. & Syst.

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“…Noda et al proposed a dynamic analysis‐based technique that reduces the number of lifelines (and interactions) in reverse‐engineered sequence diagrams by selecting only the important objects in a software system. The identification of the core objects is achieved by detecting the long‐lived and frequently accessed objects in the execution traces.…”

Section: Overview Of State‐of‐the‐art Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Program comprehension through reverse‐engineered sequence diagrams: A systematic review

Ghaleb

Alturki

Aljasser

2018

J Software Evolu Process

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Reverse engineering of sequence diagrams refers to the process of extracting meaningful information about the behavior of software systems in the form of appropriately generated sequence diagrams. This process has become a practical method for retrieving the behavior of software systems, primarily those with inadequate documentation. Various approaches have been proposed in the literature to produce from a given system a series of interactions that can be used for different purposes. The reason for such diversity of approaches is the need to offer sequence diagrams that can cater for the users' specific goals and needs, which can vary widely depending on the users' perception and understandability of visual representations and the target application domains. In this paper, we systematically review existing techniques in this context while focusing on their distinct purposes and potentials of providing more understandable sequence diagrams. In addition, a qualitative evaluation of such techniques is conducted to expose their adequacy and applicability for effective program comprehension. Finally, we list a set of possible extensions to the unified modeling language sequence diagram standard that we anticipate will enhance its versatility and understandability of program control flow, followed by a number of concluding remarks.

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“…Afterwards, UML state machine and sequence diagrams are reverse engineered from the gathered information. The problems of merging the recorded execution traces are addressed in [22], where a method for identifying systems key behavior and generating a readable sequence diagrams is presented. There are several studies on reverse engineering specifically use case diagrams.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The new extending use case and combined use case are joined by extend relation(Figure 4, line 21). Combined use cases' activity diagram is appended with decision node, reference (callBehaviorAction) to the new activity diagram, and merge node(Figure 4, lines[22][23][24].…”

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confidence: 99%

Method for Reverse Engineering UML Use Case Model for Websites

Čeponienė

Drungilas

Jurgelaitis

et al. 2018

ITC

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Problems with inadequately documented or undocumented websites could be alleviated by introducing reverse engineering of UML diagrams. In this paper, the method for reverse engineering UML use case model for websites is presented. It consists of two steps: recording user actions in the analyzed website, and then transforming the combination of recorded activity and publicly available HTML code information into UML use case model. This model consists of UML use case diagram and UML activity diagrams describing scenario of each use case. The proposed method is implemented as a Google Chrome plugin named WEB2UML. WEB2UML is able to generate UML use case and activity diagrams in XMI format, compatible with MagicDraw UML CASE tool. During experimental evaluation of the WEB2UML tool, two UML use case models were reverse engineered: one for moodle. if.ktu.lt website and another for researchgate.net website. The quality of generated models was evaluated using an anonymous questionnaire completed by 13 UML modelling experts. The results of expert evaluation are encouraging: in total, average expert evaluation score was 8,4 in a scale of ten.

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Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization Using Reference Relations and Access Analysis

Cited by 12 publications

References 33 publications

Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization by Analyzing Reference Relations and Dynamic Properties

Identifying Core Objects for Trace Summarization by Analyzing Reference Relations and Dynamic Properties

Program comprehension through reverse‐engineered sequence diagrams: A systematic review

Method for Reverse Engineering UML Use Case Model for Websites

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