JIAD: a tool to infer design patterns in refactoring

ABSTRACT

Refactoring in object-orientation has gained increased attention due to its ability to improve design quality. Refactoring using design patterns (DPs) leads to production of high quality software systems. Although numerous tools related to refactoring exist, only a few of them apply design patterns in refactoring. Even these do not clearly specify where refactoring can be applied and when to apply appropriate design patterns.In this paper, we propose a tool, JIAD (Java based Intent-Aspects Detector) which addresses the refactoring issues such as, the scope for applying DPs in the code and the appropriate selection of DPs. The tool automates the identification of Intent-Aspects (IAs) which helps in applying suitable design patterns while refactoring the Java code. By automating the process of identifying IAs, the whole process of refactoring using DPs can be automated which enables rapid development of software systems. Also, the tool minimizes the number of possible errors while inferring the suitable DPs to apply refactoring. Our approach primarily focuses on Java code refactoring using declarative programming and AspectJ compiler. Finally, the tool is validated using two applications namely, JLex and Java2Prolog written in Java.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.7 Distribution, Maintenance, and Enhancement
          Subjects: Restructuring, reverse engineering, and reengineering

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.1 PROGRAMMING TECHNIQUES
      D.1.2 Automatic Programming
      D.1.6 Logic Programming
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.3 Coding Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: Object-oriented programming

General Terms:
Design, Languages, Reliability, Verification

Keywords:
declarative programming, design pattern (DP), facts-base, intent-aspects (IAs), object-oriented systems, predicate-templates, prolog, refactoring, rule-base