Towards a semantic-based approach for software reusable component classification and retrieval

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose a semantic-based approach to improve software component reuse. The whole approach extends the software reusable library to the World Wide Web; overcomes the keyword-based barrier by allowing user queries in natural language; treats a software component as a service described by semantic service representation format; enhances the retrieval by semantically matching between a user query semantic representation and software component semantic descriptions against a domain ontology; and finally stores the relevant software components into a reusable repository based UDDI infrastructure. The technologies applied to achieve the goal include: Natural Language Processing, Web services, Semantic Web, Conceptual Graph, domain ontology. The research in the first phase will focus on the classification and retrieval for software reusable components. In the classification process, natural language processing and domain knowledge technologies are employed for program understanding down to code level, and Web services and Semantic Web technologies as well as Conceptual Graph are used to semantically describe/represent a component. In the retrieval process, a user query in natural language is translate into semantic representation formats in order to augment retrieval recall and precision by deploying the same semantic representation technologies on both the user query side and the component side.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        D.2.13 Reusable Software

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
domain knowledge base, ontology, reusable library, reuse repository, semantic matchmaking, system develop