Software Engineering Commons^™

Defaultification Refactoring: A Tool For Automatically Converting Java Methods To Default, Raffi Khatchadourian, Hidehiko Masuhara

Publications and Research

Enabling interfaces to declare (instance) method implementations, Java 8 default methods can be used as a substitute for the ubiquitous skeletal implementation software design pattern. Performing this transformation on legacy software manually, though, may be non-trivial. The refactoring requires analyzing complex type hierarchies, resolving multiple implementation inheritance issues, reconciling differences between class and interface methods, and analyzing tie-breakers (dispatch precedence) with overriding class methods. All of this is necessary to preserve type-correctness and confirm semantics preservation. We demonstrate an automated refactoring tool called Migrate Skeletal Implementation to Interface for transforming legacy Java code to use the new default construct. The …

Automated Refactoring Of Legacy Java Software To Default Methods, Raffi Khatchadourian, Hidehiko Masuhara

Publications and Research

Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations, are useful for the skeletal implementation software design pattern. However, it is not easy to transform existing software to exploit default methods as it requires analyzing complex type hierarchies, resolving multiple implementation inheritance issues, reconciling differences between class and interface methods, and analyzing tie-breakers (dispatch precedence) with overriding class methods to preserve type-correctness and confirm semantics preservation. In this paper, we present an efficient, fully-automated, type constraint-based refactoring approach that assists developers in taking advantage of enhanced interfaces for their legacy Java software. The approach features an extensive …

Automated Refactoring Of Legacy Java Software To Default Methods, Raffi Khatchadourian, Hidehiko Masuhara

Publications and Research

Java 8 default methods, which allow interfaces to contain (instance) method implementations, are useful for the skeletal implementation software design pattern. However, it is not easy to transform existing software to exploit default methods as it requires analyzing complex type hierarchies, resolving multiple implementation inheritance issues, reconciling differences between class and interface methods, and analyzing tie-breakers (dispatch precedence) with overriding class methods to preserve type-correctness and confirm semantics preservation. In this paper, we present an efficient, fully-automated, type constraint-based refactoring approach that assists developers in taking advantage of enhanced interfaces for their legacy Java software. The approach features an extensive …

Towards Improving Interface Modularity In Legacy Java Software Through Automated Refactoring, Raffi T. Khatchadourian, Olivia Moore, Hidehiko Masuhara

Publications and Research

The skeletal implementation pattern is a software design pattern consisting of defining an abstract class that provides a partial interface implementation. However, since Java allows only single class inheritance, if implementers decide to extend a skeletal implementation, they will not be allowed to extend any other class. Also, discovering the skeletal implementation may require a global analysis. Java 8 enhanced interfaces alleviate these problems by allowing interfaces to contain (default) method implementations, which implementers inherit. Java classes are then free to extend a different class, and a separate abstract class is no longer needed; developers considering implementing an interface need …

Towards Improving Interface Modularity In Legacy Java Software Through Automated Refactoring, Raffi Khatchadourian, Olivia Moore, Hidehiko Masuhara

Publications and Research

The skeletal implementation pattern is a software design pattern that defines an abstract class that provides a partial interface implementation. However, since Java allows only single class inheritance, if implementers decide to extend a skeletal implementation, they will not be allowed to extend any other class. Also, discovering the skeletal implementation may require a global analysis. Java 8 enhanced interfaces alleviate these problems by enabling interfaces to contain (default) method implementations, which implementers inherit. Java classes are then free to extend a different class, and a separate abstract class is no longer needed; developers considering implementing an interface need only …

Porting The Netbeans Java 8 Enhanced For Loop Lambda Expression Refactoring To Eclipse, Md Arefin, Raffi Khatchadourian

Publications and Research

Java 8 is one of the largest upgrades to the popular language and framework in over a decade. However, the Eclipse IDE is missing several key refactorings that could help developers take advantage of new features in Java 8 more easily. In this paper, we discuss our ongoing work in porting the enhanced for loop to lambda expression refactoring from the NetBeans IDE to Eclipse. We also discuss future plans for new Java 8 refactorings not found in any current IDE.

Porting The Netbeans Java 8 Enhanced For Loop Lambda Expression Refactoring To Eclipse, Md Arefin, Raffi Khatchadourian

Publications and Research

Java 8 is one of the largest upgrades to the popular language and framework in over a decade. However, the Eclipse IDE is missing several key refactorings that could help developers take advantage of new features in Java 8 more easily. In this paper, we discuss our ongoing work in porting the enhanced for loop to lambda expression refactoring from the NetBeans IDE to Eclipse. We also discuss future plans for new Java 8 refactorings not found in any current IDE.

An Approach For Clone Detection In Documentation Reuse, Dmitry V. Lutsiv, Dmitry Koznov, Hamid A. Basit, Eng Lieh Ouh, Mikhail N. Smirnov, Konstantin Y. Romanovsky

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The paper focuses on the searching method for repetitions in DocBook/DRL or plain text documents. An algorithm has been designed based on software clone detection. The algorithm supports filtering results: clones are rejected if clone length in the group is less than 5 symbols, intersection of clone groups is eliminated, meaningfulness clones are removed, the groups containing clones consisting only of XML are eliminated. Remaining search is supported: found clones are extracted from the documentation, and clone search is repeated. One step is proved to be enough. Adaptive reuse technique of Paul Bassett – Stan Jarzabek has been implemented. A …

Interactive Ambient Visualizations For Soft Advice, Emerson Murphy-Hill, Titus Barik, Andrew P. Black

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Some software packages offer the user soft advice: recommendations that are intended to help the user create high quality artifacts, but which may turn out to be bad advice. It is left to the user to determine whether the soft advice really will improve quality, and to decide whether or not to adopt it. Visualizations can help the user in making this decision, but we believe that conventional visualizations are less than ideal. In this paper, we describe an interactive ambient visualization to help users identify, understand and interpret soft advice.

Our visualization was developed to help programmers interpret code …

Refactoring Pipe-Like Mashups For End-User Programmers, Kathryn T. Stolee, Sebastian Elbaum

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Mashups are becoming increasingly popular as end users are able to easily access, manipulate, and compose data from many web sources. We have observed, however, that mashups tend to suffer from deficiencies that propagate as mashups are reused. To address these deficiencies, we would like to bring some of the benefits of software engineering techniques to the end users creating these programs. In this work, we focus on identifying code smells indicative of the deficiencies we observed in web mashups programmed in the popular Yahoo! Pipes environment. Through an empirical study, we explore the impact of those smells on end-user …

Rejuvenate Pointcut: A Tool For Pointcut Expression Recovery In Evolving Aspect-Oriented Software, Raffi Khatchadourian, Awais Rashid

Publications and Research

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) strives to localize the scattered and tangled implementations of crosscutting concerns (CCCs) by allowing developers to declare that certain actions (advice) should be taken at specific points (join points) during the execution of software where a CCC (an aspect) is applicable. However, it is non-trivial to construct optimal pointcut expressions (a collection of join points) that capture the true intentions of the programmer and, upon evolution, maintain these intentions. We demonstrate an AspectJ source-level inferencing tool called rejuvenate pointcut which helps developers maintain pointcut expressions over the lifetime of a software product. A key insight into the …

Scalable Detection Of Semantic Clones, Mark Gabel, Lingxiao Jiang, Zhendong Su

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Several techniques have been developed for identifying similar code fragments in programs. These similar fragments, referred to as code clones, can be used to identify redundant code, locate bugs, or gain insight into program design. Existing scalable approaches to clone detection are limited to finding program fragments that are similar only in their contiguous syntax. Other, semantics-based approaches are more resilient to differences in syntax, such as reordered statements, related statements interleaved with other unrelated statements, or the use of semantically equivalent control structures. However, none of these techniques have scaled to real world code bases. These approaches capture semantic …