Ranking significance of software components based on use relations

Collections of already developed programs are important resources for efficient development of reliable software systems. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-representation model of a software component library (repository), called component rank model. This is based on analyzing actual usage re...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering 2005-03, Vol.31 (3), p.213-225
Main Authors: Inoue, K., Yokomori, R., Yamamoto, T., Matsushita, M., Kusumoto, S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Application software
Collection
Companies
Components
Computer programming
Computer programs
Computer science
graph representation model
Graph representations
Graphs
Index Terms- Component rank
Information analysis
Information retrieval
Information science
Inheritances
Internet
Java
Java (programming language)
Libraries
program analysis
Programming
Propagation
Repositories
reusable libraries
reuse models
Software
Software engineering
Software libraries
Software quality
Software systems
Studies
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Summary:Collections of already developed programs are important resources for efficient development of reliable software systems. In this paper, we propose a novel graph-representation model of a software component library (repository), called component rank model. This is based on analyzing actual usage relations of the components and propagating the significance through the usage relations. Using the component rank model, we have developed a Java class retrieval system named SPARS-J and applied SPARS-J to various collections of Java files. The result shows that SPARS-J gives a higher rank to components that are used more frequently. As a result, software engineers looking for a component have a better chance of finding it quickly. SPARS-J has been used by two companies, and has produced promising results.
ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.2005.38