Study of the Utility Of Text Classification Based Software Architecture Recovery Method RELAX for Maintenance
Background. The software architecture recovery method RELAX produces a concern-based architectural view of a software system graphically and textually from that system’s source code. The method has been implemented in software which can recover the architecture of systems whose source code is written in Java.
Aims. Our aim was to find out whether the availability of architectural views produced by RELAX can help maintainers who are new to a project in becoming productive with development tasks sooner, and how they felt about working in such an environment.
Method. We conducted a user study with nine participants. They were subjected to a controlled experiment in which maintenance success and speed with and without access to RELAX recovery results were compared to each other.
Results. We have observed that employing architecture views produced by RELAX helped participants reduce time to get started on maintenance tasks by a factor of 5.38 or more. While most participants were unable to finish their tasks within the allotted time when they did not have recovery results available, all of them finished them successfully when they did. Additionally, participants reported that these views were easy to understand, helped them to learn the system’s structure and enabled them to compare different versions of the system.
Conclusions. Through the speedup to the start of maintenance experienced by the participants as well as in their formed opinions, RELAX has shown itself to be a valuable help that could provide the basis of further tools that specifically support the development process with a focus on maintenance.
Thu 14 OctDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
13:00 - 14:05 | Software Architecture and DesignTechnical Papers / Emerging Results and Vision papers at ESEM ROOM Chair(s): Davide Taibi Tampere University | ||
13:00 15mTalk | Tackling Consistency-Related Design Challenges of Distributed Data-Intensive Systems – An Action Research Study Technical Papers Susanne Braun Fraunhofer IESE, Stefan Deßloch TU Kaiserslautern, Eberhard Wolff INNOQ, Frank Elberzhager Fraunhofer IESE, Andreas Jedlitschka Fraunhofer Pre-print Media Attached | ||
13:15 15mTalk | Facing the Giant: a Grounded Theory Study of Decision-Making in Microservices Migrations Technical Papers Hamdy Michael Ayas Chalmers University of Technology | University of Gothenburg, Philipp Leitner Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden / University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Regina Hebig Pre-print Media Attached | ||
13:30 15mTalk | The Existence and Co-Modifications of Code Clones within or across Microservices Technical Papers Ran Mo Central China Normal University, Yang Zhao Central China Normal University, Qiong Feng Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Zengyang Li Central China Normal University DOI | ||
13:45 10mTalk | Study of the Utility Of Text Classification Based Software Architecture Recovery Method RELAX for Maintenance Emerging Results and Vision papers Daniel Link University of Southern California, Kamonphop Srisopha University of Southern California, USA, Barry Boehm University of Southern California Media Attached | ||
13:55 10mTalk | Semantic Slicing of Architectural Change Commits: Towards Semantic Design Review Emerging Results and Vision papers Amit Kumar Mondal University of Saskatchewan, Chanchal K. Roy University of Saskatchewan, Kevin Schneider University of Saskatchewan, Banani Roy University of Saskatchewan, Sristy Sumana Nath University of Saskatchewan | ||