On the use of genetic programming for automated refactoring and the introduction of design patterns

Jensen, Adam C.; Cheng, Betty H. C.

doi:10.1145/1830483.1830731

Cited by 67 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Ouni et al [16] use metrics for a multiobjective approach for Fowler's catalog [5] of refactorings. In [6], Ghannem et al and in a similar way Jensen et al [9] and O'Keeffe et al [15] restrict their approaches to metrics regarding class structures and support the relevant refactorings from the same catalog. All these approaches have in common that they use, in addition to the reduction of considered architectural aspects, heuristic search techniques to determine a sequence of refactoring operations.…”

Section: State Of the Art Of Complex Re-factoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards flexible automated software architecture erosion diagnosis and treatment

Mair

Herold

Rausch

2014

Proceedings of the WICSA 2014 Companion Volume

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Uncontrolled software architecture erosion can lead to a degradation of the quality of a software system. It is hence of great importance to repair erosion efficiently. Refactorings can help to systematically reverse software architecture erosion through applying them in the system where architectural violations have been detected. However, existing refactoring approaches do not address architecture erosion holistically.In this paper, we describe and formalize the theoretical problem of repairing eroded software systems by finding optimal repair sequences. Furthermore, we investigate the applicability and limitations of existing refactoring approaches. We argue, true to the motto "more knowledge means less search" that using formalized and explicit knowledge of software engineers-modeled as fault patterns and repair strategies-combined with heuristic search techniques could overcome those limitations. This paper outlines a new approach-analog to a patient history in medicine-we have been starting to investigate in our recent research and also aims at stimulating a discussion about further research challenges in repairing eroded software systems.

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Section: State Of the Art Of Complex Re-factoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards flexible automated software architecture erosion diagnosis and treatment

Mair

Herold

Rausch

2014

Proceedings of the WICSA 2014 Companion Volume

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“…Improving design quality by moving methods among classes was also investigated by Harman and Tratt [10]; their key contribution is the use a Pareto optimal approach to make combination of metrics easier. Jensen and Cheng [13] use refactoring in a genetic programming environment to improve the quality of the design in terms of the QMOOD quality model. Their approach was found to be capable of introducing design pattern through the refactoring process, which helps to change the design radically.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While refactoring is normally carried out "by hand" using only the refactoring support provided by the IDE, more recent research has investigated the possibility of using a fully automated approach that relies on search-based refactoring [10,11,13,21]. In this approach, a search technique such as hill climbing, simulated annealing or a genetic algorithm is used to drive the refactoring process, which is guided by a software metric, or set of metrics, that the developer wishes to optimise.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving Software Security Using Search-Based Refactoring

Ghaith

Cinnéide

2012

Search Based Software Engineering

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Abstract. Security metrics have been proposed to assess the security of software applications based on the principles of "reduce attack surface" and "grant least privilege." While these metrics can help inform the developer in choosing designs that provide better security, they cannot on their own show exactly how to make an application more secure. Even if they could, the onerous task of updating the software to improve its security is left to the developer. In this paper we present an approach to automated improvement of software security based on search-based refactoring. We use the search-based refactoring platform, Code-Imp, to refactor the code in a fully-automated fashion. The fitness function used to guide the search is based on a number of software security metrics. The purpose is to improve the security of the software immediately prior to its release and deployment. To test the value of this approach we apply it to an industrial banking application that has a strong security dimension, namely Wife. The results show an average improvement of 27.5% in the metrics examined. A more detailed analysis reveals that 15.5% of metric improvement results in real improvement in program security, while the remaining 12% of metric improvement is attributable to hitherto undocumented weaknesses in the security metrics themselves.

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“…Otero et al [21] use search-based refactoring to refactor a program as it is being evolved using genetic programming in an attempt to find a different design which may admit a useful transformation as part of the genetic programming algorithm. Jensen and Cheng [16] use genetic programming to drive a search-based refactoring process that aims to introduce design patterns.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Refactoring for Testability

Cinnéide

Boyle

Moghadam

2011

2011 IEEE Fourth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops

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Abstract-Current software practice places a strong emphasis on unit testing, to the extent that the amount of test code produced on a project can exceed the amount of actual application code required. This illustrates the importance of testability as a feature of software. In this paper we investigate whether it is possible to improve a program's testability using an automated refactoring approach. We conduct a quasi-experiment where we create a small application that scores poorly using a proven cohesion metric, LSCC. Using our automated refactoring platform, Code-Imp, this application is automatically refactored using the LSCC metric to guide the search for better solutions. To evaluate the results, a number of industrial software engineers were asked to write test cases for the application both before and after refactoring and compare the relative difficulty involved. The results were interesting though inconclusive, and suggest that further work is required.

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On the use of genetic programming for automated refactoring and the introduction of design patterns

Cited by 67 publications

References 7 publications

Towards flexible automated software architecture erosion diagnosis and treatment

Towards flexible automated software architecture erosion diagnosis and treatment

Improving Software Security Using Search-Based Refactoring

Automated Refactoring for Testability

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