35,614 research outputs found

    Are Forward Designed or Reverse-Engineered UML Diagrams More Helpful for Code Maintenance?: A Controlled Experiment

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    Context: UML has been the de facto standard notation for modeling object-oriented software systems since its appearance in 1997. UML diagrams are important for maintainers of a system, especially when the software was developed by a different team. These diagrams of the system are not always available, however, and are commonly recovered using Reverse Engineering (RE) techniques. When obtained through RE, UML diagrams have a high level of detail as compared to those developed in the forward design activity. Method: In this paper we report on a comparison of the attitude and performance of maintainers when using these two kinds of diagrams during the maintenance of source code. Our findings were obtained by carrying out a controlled experiment with 40 students of a Masterā€™s degree in Computer Science. Results: The results show a preference for forward design diagrams but do not display significant differences in task performance. The post-experiment survey results have led us to conclude that the subjects did not consider RE diagrams helpful; they found them difficult to understand, particularly the sequence diagrams. In the case of forward design diagrams, subjects considered sequence diagrams as useful, but they did not really employ them. Conclusions: Based on our findings, as regards performance of maintainers, there are no objective results which favor the use of one of these types of diagram in particular, i.e., UML diagrams which come from forwards design, on the one hand, and diagrams obtained from RE, on the other. Subjective opinions do, however, lead us to recommend the use of diagrams created during design. Nevertheless, we realize that the results should be considered as preliminary ones; further replications of this experiment are planned, using students and professionals, the aim being to obtain more conclusive results.Ministerio de EconomĆ­a y Competitividad TIN2012-37493-C03-0

    Fujaba days 2009 : proceedings of the 7th international Fujaba days, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, November 16-17, 2009

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    Fujaba is an Open Source UML CASE tool project started at the software engineering group of Paderborn University in 1997. In 2002 Fujaba has been redesigned and became the Fujaba Tool Suite with a plug-in architecture allowing developers to add functionality easily while retaining full control over their contributions. Multiple Application Domains Fujaba followed the model-driven development philosophy right from its beginning in 1997. At the early days, Fujaba had a special focus on code generation from UML diagrams resulting in a visual programming language with a special emphasis on object structure manipulating rules. Today, at least six rather independent tool versions are under development in Paderborn, Kassel, and Darmstadt for supporting (1) reengineering, (2) embedded real-time systems, (3) education, (4) specification of distributed control systems, (5) integration with the ECLIPSE platform, and (6) MOF-based integration of system (re-) engineering tools. International Community According to our knowledge, quite a number of research groups have also chosen Fujaba as a platform for UML and MDA related research activities. In addition, quite a number of Fujaba users send requests for more functionality and extensions. Therefore, the 7th International Fujaba Days aimed at bringing together Fujaba developers and Fujaba users from all over the world to present their ideas and projects and to discuss them with each other and with the Fujaba core development team

    Fujaba days 2009 : proceedings of the 7th international Fujaba days, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, November 16-17, 2009

    Get PDF
    Fujaba is an Open Source UML CASE tool project started at the software engineering group of Paderborn University in 1997. In 2002 Fujaba has been redesigned and became the Fujaba Tool Suite with a plug-in architecture allowing developers to add functionality easily while retaining full control over their contributions. Multiple Application Domains Fujaba followed the model-driven development philosophy right from its beginning in 1997. At the early days, Fujaba had a special focus on code generation from UML diagrams resulting in a visual programming language with a special emphasis on object structure manipulating rules. Today, at least six rather independent tool versions are under development in Paderborn, Kassel, and Darmstadt for supporting (1) reengineering, (2) embedded real-time systems, (3) education, (4) specification of distributed control systems, (5) integration with the ECLIPSE platform, and (6) MOF-based integration of system (re-) engineering tools. International Community According to our knowledge, quite a number of research groups have also chosen Fujaba as a platform for UML and MDA related research activities. In addition, quite a number of Fujaba users send requests for more functionality and extensions. Therefore, the 7th International Fujaba Days aimed at bringing together Fujaba developers and Fujaba users from all over the world to present their ideas and projects and to discuss them with each other and with the Fujaba core development team

    On modeling system-centric information for role engineering

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    In this paper we present an approach to modeling system-centric information in order to facilitate role engineering (RE). In particular, we first discuss the general character-istics of the information required in RE. Afterwards, we discuss two informational flow types among authorities in-volved in RE process, forward information flow (FIF) and backward information flow (BIF), together with the intro-duction of an information model which is greatly suitable for use in the backward information flow. System-centric information is incorporated in the information model and UML extension mechanisms are exploited for modeling the information. Not only can the information model provide those different authorities with a method for both analy-sis of resources and communication of knowledge in the RE process, but it can also help lay a foundation for successful implementations of RBAC

    Design patterns discovery in source code : novel technique using substring match

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    The role of design pattern mining is a very significant strategy of re-engineering as with the help of detection one could easily understand complex systems. Of course, identifying a design pattern is not always a simple task. Additionally, pattern recovering methods often encounter problems dealing with space outburst for extensive systems. This paper introduces a new way to discover a design pattern based on an Impact Analysis matrix followed by substring match. UML diagrams corresponding to codes are created using Visual Paradigm Enterprise. Impact Analysis matrices of these UML diagrams are converted to string format. Considering system code string as main string and design pattern string as a substring, the main string is further decomposed. A substring match technique is developed here to discover design patterns in the source code. Overall, this procedure has the potential to convert the representation of system design and design pattern in ingenious shapes. In addition, this method has the advantage of moderation in the size. Therefore, this approach is beneficial for Software professionals and researchers due to its simplicity. Keywords : Design patterns, UML diagrams, Visual Paradigm Enterprise software, Impact Analysis Matrix, Substring match.publishedVersio

    An extensible benchmark and tooling for comparing reverse engineering approaches

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    Various tools exist to reverse engineer software source code and generate design information, such as UML projections. Each has specific strengths and weaknesses, however no standardised benchmark exists that can be used to evaluate and compare their performance and effectiveness in a systematic manner. To facilitate such comparison in this paper we introduce the Reverse Engineering to Design Benchmark (RED-BM), which consists of a comprehensive set of Java-based targets for reverse engineering and a formal set of performance measures with which tools and approaches can be analysed and ranked. When used to evaluate 12 industry standard tools performance figures range from 8.82\% to 100\% demonstrating the ability of the benchmark to differentiate between tools. To aid the comparison, analysis and further use of reverse engineering XMI output we have developed a parser which can interpret the XMI output format of the most commonly used reverse engineering applications, and is used in a number of tools

    A Model-Driven Architecture Approach to the Efficient Identification of Services on Service-oriented Enterprise Architecture

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    Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture requires the efficient development of loosely-coupled and interoperable sets of services. Existing design approaches do not always take full advantage of the value and importance of the engineering invested in existing legacy systems. This paper proposes an approach to define the key services from such legacy systems effectively. The approach focuses on identifying these services based on a Model-Driven Architecture approach supported by guidelines over a wide range of possible service types

    Towards a methodology for rigorous development of generic requirements patterns

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    We present work in progress on a methodology for the engineering, validation and verification of generic requirements using domain engineering and formal methods. The need to develop a generic requirement set for subsequent system instantiation is complicated by the addition of the high levels of verification demanded by safety-critical domains such as avionics. We consider the failure detection and management function for engine control systems as an application domain where product line engineering is useful. The methodology produces a generic requirement set in our, UML based, formal notation, UML-B. The formal verification both of the generic requirement set, and of a particular application, is achieved via translation to the formal specification language, B, using our U2B and ProB tools
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