Anti-pattern detection with model queries: A comparison of approaches

Abstract

Abstract-Program queries play an important role in several software evolution tasks like program comprehension, impact analysis, or the automated identification of anti-patterns for complex refactoring operations. A central artifact of these tasks is the reverse engineered program model built up from the source code (usually an Abstract Semantic Graph, ASG), which is traditionally post-processed by dedicated, hand-coded queries. Our paper investigates the use of the popular industrial Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) as an underlying representation of program models processed by three general-purpose model query techniques based on native Java code, local-search and incremental evaluation. We provide in-depth comparison of these techniques on the source code of 17 Java projects using queries taken from refactoring operations in different usage profiles. Our results show that general purpose model queries outperform hand-coded queries by 2-3 orders of magnitude, while there is a 5-10 times increase in memory consumption and model load time. In addition, measurement results of usage profiles can be used as guidelines for selecting the appropriate query technologies in concrete scenarios.

AspectJ code analysis and verification with GASR

“…This renders them attractive for prototyping development tools. Comparisons of the expressiveness of some of these languages exist [57,58], but they are not yet comprehensive.…”

Performance comparison of query-based techniques for anti-pattern detection

“…After the first round of our experiments described in [4], it turned out that all antipatterns can be evaluated by our selection of tools effectively. In order to find the limits of the approaches, we selected two additional, more complex antipatterns requiring additional capabilities.…”

“…This article is based on a conference paper [4] with extensions along four directions: two new types of anti-pattern queries were implemented, which are different from previous ones in their complexity and nature; OCL queries were included in the study as a fifth approach; the size of subject programs were increased from 1.9 M to 10 M lines of code, including three large programs (over 1 M lines of code each) to experiment with the limitations of the approaches; and the evaluation was extended, among others, with model and query metrics and with a lessons learned section.…”

A Methodology for Designing High Confidence Pattern via Event B

“…That was in code level only. In 2014 [6] authors evaluated different query approaches to locate anti-patterns for refactoring Java programs. In a traditional setup, they use code analysis tool called Columbus to optimize Abstract Semantic Graph and processed by hand-coded visitor queries.…”

“…There are many works introduce to detect only special problems like in references [1], [2] and [3]. In addition, there were many works for the general problems detection such as in references [4], [5] and [6], but our proposed method covered all the informal problems (special and general). In addition, Using Formal methods languages like Event-B can be support mathematical reasoning required for detecting this kind of problems.…”