A DYNAMIC APPROACH FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN PATTERNS

摘要

Maintenance is undoubtedly the most effort consuming activity in the software process. Maintenance effort can be decreased by representing a system as a collection of high level building blocks, such as design patterns. In this paper, we present a dynamic approach for the identification of object-oriented design patterns. The approach is based on tracing some methods in pattern candidates, which are the output of a static analyzer preceding the dynamic analysis stage. The methods to be traced are determined in each pattern individually according to its expected dynamic characteristics. The advantage of this approach is that it reduces the amount of dynamic information to be analyzed. Hence, it improves the efficiency of the identification process. The suggested approach is tested on a large-scale case study. Results of the case study demonstrate the accuracy of the presented approach.