GEML: A Grammar-based Evolutionary Machine Learning Approach for Design-Pattern Detection

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Barbudo, Rafael, Ramírez, Aurora, Servant, Francisco, Romero, José Raúl
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Barbudo, Rafael
Ramírez, Aurora
Servant, Francisco
Romero, José Raúl
author_facet Barbudo, Rafael
Ramírez, Aurora
Servant, Francisco
Romero, José Raúl
contents Design patterns (DPs) are recognised as a good practice in software development. However, the lack of appropriate documentation often hampers traceability, and their benefits are blurred among thousands of lines of code. Automatic methods for DP detection have become relevant but are usually based on the rigid analysis of either software metrics or specific properties of the source code. We propose GEML, a novel detection approach based on evolutionary machine learning using software properties of diverse nature. Firstly, GEML makes use of an evolutionary algorithm to extract those characteristics that better describe the DP, formulated in terms of human-readable rules, whose syntax is conformant with a context-free grammar. Secondly, a rule-based classifier is built to predict whether new code contains a hidden DP implementation. GEML has been validated over five DPs taken from a public repository recurrently adopted by machine learning studies. Then, we increase this number up to 15 diverse DPs, showing its effectiveness and robustness in terms of detection capability. An initial parameter study served to tune a parameter setup whose performance guarantees the general applicability of this approach without the need to adjust complex parameters to a specific pattern. Finally, a demonstration tool is also provided.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_07042
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GEML: A Grammar-based Evolutionary Machine Learning Approach for Design-Pattern Detection
Barbudo, Rafael
Ramírez, Aurora
Servant, Francisco
Romero, José Raúl
Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
68W50
D.2.7; I.2.8
Design patterns (DPs) are recognised as a good practice in software development. However, the lack of appropriate documentation often hampers traceability, and their benefits are blurred among thousands of lines of code. Automatic methods for DP detection have become relevant but are usually based on the rigid analysis of either software metrics or specific properties of the source code. We propose GEML, a novel detection approach based on evolutionary machine learning using software properties of diverse nature. Firstly, GEML makes use of an evolutionary algorithm to extract those characteristics that better describe the DP, formulated in terms of human-readable rules, whose syntax is conformant with a context-free grammar. Secondly, a rule-based classifier is built to predict whether new code contains a hidden DP implementation. GEML has been validated over five DPs taken from a public repository recurrently adopted by machine learning studies. Then, we increase this number up to 15 diverse DPs, showing its effectiveness and robustness in terms of detection capability. An initial parameter study served to tune a parameter setup whose performance guarantees the general applicability of this approach without the need to adjust complex parameters to a specific pattern. Finally, a demonstration tool is also provided.
title GEML: A Grammar-based Evolutionary Machine Learning Approach for Design-Pattern Detection
topic Software Engineering
Artificial Intelligence
68W50
D.2.7; I.2.8
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07042