Sub-graph Mining: Identifying Micro-architectures in Evolving Object-Oriented Software

Abstract—Developers introduce novel and undocumented micro-architectures when performing evolution tasks on object-oriented applications. We are interested in understanding whether those organizations of classes and relations can bear, much like cataloged design and anti-patterns, potential harm or benefit to an objectoriented application. We present SGFinder, a sub-graph mining approach and tool based on an efficient enumeration technique to identify recurring micro-architectures in object-oriented class diagrams. Once SGFinder has detected instances of micro-architectures, we exploit these instances to identify their desirable properties, such as stability, or unwanted properties, such as change or fault proneness. We perform a feasibility study of our approach by applying SGFinder on the reverseengineered class diagrams of several releases of two Java applications: ArgoUML and Rhino. We characterize and highlight some of the most interesting microarchitectures, e.g., the most fa...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CSMR
• Authors: Ahmed Belderrar, Segla Kpodjedo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Giuliano Antoniol, Philippe Galinier
• Keywords: Class Diagrams, CSMR 2011, Efficient Enumeration Technique, Object-oriented Class Diagrams, Software Engineering