EFFECTIVE FEATURE LOCATION IN LARGE LEGACY SYSTEMS

摘要

A fine-grained behavior model matching based method and system for effective feature location in large legacy systems. A feature behavior analyzer extracts internal behaviors of a feature under requesting based on NLP techniques or writing rules of the feature specification and generates a feature behavior model. A method uses multiple information sources associated with each method under analyzing to generate an expressive behavior signature for each method. The method integrates control flow information of each method and the signature information of its callees, and generates a CFG-based behavior model. A feature location identifier identifies and ranks the feature-related code locations based on a similarity between the feature behavior and the code behavior models. In one aspect, “use cases”, “source code repository” and “issue tracking system” are historical information of existing applications that are used to help understand each code unit of legacy systems applications, and recommend code units related with the given feature description.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for effective feature location in software code comprising:
receiving a specification of a software feature implementation to be located in software code, generating a feature behavior model specifying one or more of: an action and/or entity “master” behavior and a action and/or entity “slave” behavior; accessing methods and related artifacts from a source code repository; generating an expressive behavior signature for an accessed method based on any related artifacts information; identifying one or more feature-related code scope methods exhibiting the feature implementation using the expressive behavior signature for the method and the generated feature behavior model associated with the feature description; generating a code behavior model for each one or more feature-related code scope method; determining a similarity between the feature behavior model and the code behavior models; and identifying and ranking a feature location feature-related code locations based on the similarity determining, wherein a hardware processor device performs one or more said receiving, said feature behavior model generating, said accessing, said analyzing, said expressive behavior signature generating, said feature-related code scope identifying, said code behavior model generating determining, and said feature-related code locations identifying and ranking.