Using FCA to Suggest Refactorings to Correct Design Defects

Abstract. Design defects are poor design choices resulting in a hard-tomaintain software, hence their detection and correction are key steps of a disciplined software process aimed at yielding high-quality software artifacts. While modern structure- and metric-based techniques enable precise detection of design defects, the correction of the discovered defects, e.g., by means of refactorings, remains a manual, hence error-prone, activity. As many of the refactorings amount to re-distributing class members over a (possibly extended) set of classes, formal concept analysis (FCA) has been successfully applied in the past as a formal framework for refactoring exploration. Here we propose a novel approach for defect removal in object-oriented programs that combines the effectiveness of metrics with the theoretical strength of FCA. A case study of a specific defect, the Blob, drawn from the Azureus project illustrates our approach.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: CLA
• Authors: Naouel Moha, Jihene Rezgui, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Petko Valtchev, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi
• Keywords: CLA 2006, CLA 2007, Design Defects, Enable Precise Detection, Formal Concept Analysis