On using UML Diagrams to Identify and Assess Software Design Smells

Haendler, Thorsten

doi:10.5220/0006938504130421

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Another approach is to support refactoring at a design level, usually based on a UML class model. This can benefit from the advantages of models such as improving source code comprehensibility 21 and understanding software design and its issues 22,23 . However, the current work in this area, including both interactive and automated approaches, does not provide a method to apply the proposed design‐level refactorings to the source code, so the resulting refactoring sequences must subsequently be applied by hand to the source code 24–28 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can benefit from the advantages of models such as improving source code comprehensibility 21 and understanding software design and its issues. 22,23 However, the current work in this area, including both interactive and automated approaches, does not provide a method to apply the proposed design-level refactorings to the source code, so the resulting refactoring sequences must subsequently be applied by hand to the source code. [24][25][26][27][28] At best, this process is tedious and error prone, at worst refactorings that appear beneficial when looking at a UML model may not be legally applicable to the actual source code.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Model‐based source code refactoring with interaction and visual cues

Hemati Moghadam,

Ó Cinnéide,

Sardarian

et al. 2023

J Software Evolu Process

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Refactoring source code involves the developer in a myriad of program detail that can obscure the design changes that they actually wish to bring about. On the other hand, refactoring a UML model of the code makes it easier to focus on the program design, but the burdensome task of applying the refactorings to the source code is left to the developer. In an attempt to obtain the advantages of both approaches, we propose a refactoring approach where the interaction with the developer takes place at the model level, but the actual refactoring occurs on the source code itself. We call this approach model‐based source code refactoring and implement it in this paper using two tools: (1) Design‐Imp enables the developer to use interactive search‐based design exploration to create a UML‐based desired design from an initial design extracted from the source code. It also provides visual cues to improve developer comprehension during the design‐level refactoring process and to help the developer to discern between promising and poor refactoring solutions. (2) Code‐Imp then refactors the original source so that it has the same functional behavior as the original program, and a design close to the one produced in the design exploration phase, that is, a design that has been confirmed as “desirable” by the developer. We evaluated our approach involving interaction and visual cues with industrial developers refactoring three Java projects, comparing it with an approach using interaction without visual cues and a fully automated approach. The results show that our approach yields refactoring sequences that are more acceptable both to the individual developer and to a set of independent expert refactoring evaluators. Furthermore, our approach removed more code smells and was evaluated very positively by the experiment participants.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%