1. A Comparative Framework for
Design Recovery Tools
Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Kim Mens, and Roel Wuyts
CSMR 2006
Bari, Italy
GEODES
Department of Informatics Département d'ingénierie
Département d'informatique
and Operations Research informatique
Université Libre de Bruxelles
University of Montreal Université catholique de Louvain

2. Teaser
You need to recover the design of a
large, complex legacy-system...
Wouldn’t it be nice if
– You would have a catalogue of available
design recovery tools?
– You could use this catalogue to identify the
most adequate tools for your needs?
– You could compare adequate tools?
2/25 ⇒ Comparative framework

3. Context (1/3)
Maintenance
– Many successes
• Y2K
• Mini-computers
• Universities information system ☺
• …
– Lots of research work still needed
• Costs/Time
• Automation
3/25 • Reengineering

4. Context (2/3)
In software maintenance, reverse-
engineering stands as a very important
activity, at the heart of most
maintenance efforts
4/25

5. Context (3/3)
Reverse-engineering is mainly
concerned with design recovery, to
recreate design abstractions from a
combination of source code, design
documentation, personal experience,
and general knowledge about problem
and application domains
(T.J. Biggerstaff)
5/25

6. Motivations
Help in improving design recovery
– Comparison of techniques and tools
• For example, logic queries, LSI, use case and
module/class interaction views, process graph
– Identification of interesting/unexplored
research avenues
• For example, search based SE
– Replication of controlled experiments and
case studies
6/25 • For example, Mozilla

7. Problems (1/3)
Comparisons of techniques and tools
– Rationale
• Developers/Users
• Needs/Features
– Problems
• Different purposes
• Different sources of data
• Different type of recovered designs
7/25

8. Problems (2/3)
Identification of interesting/unexplored
research avenues
– Rationale
• Researchers
• Needs/Features
– Problems
• Science vs. Techniques
• ¬Reinventing the wheel
8/25

9. Problems (3/3)
Replication of controlled experiments
and case studies
– Rationale
• Researchers/Users
• Case studies
• Controlled experiments
– Problems
• Design/Replication of empirical studies on
design recovery, reverse-engineering…
9/25 • Comparison of tools

10. Our Approach
1. Methodology to compare design
recovery tools
– Incremental/Iterative
2. Comparative framework
– 8 concerns
– 51 criteria
3. Application
– 10 tools and raising
10/25
– 2 tools in the paper: SOUL and Ptidej

11. 1. Methodology (1/2)
From existing work
– Biggerstaff in 1989, 2-axis program
understanding landscape (9 tools)
– Bell and Gall in 1997, 4 functional
categories (4 tools)
– Gannod and Cheng in 1999, 4 categories
and 4 dimensions (16 tools)
– Ducasse and Tichelaar in 2003, 9-axis
design space (4 tools)
11/25

12. 1. Methodology (2/2)
From live discussions
– 6th Workshop on Object Oriented
Reengineering at ECOOP 2005
– 1st Workshop on Empirical Studies in
Reverse Engineering at STEP/ICSM 2005
Incremental/Iterative
12/25

13. 2. Comparative Framework
8 concerns
13/25

14. 2. Comparative Framework
51 criteria – Precision – Semantics
– Lifespan – Representation – Human-readable
– Methodology – Type of Data – Level of Detail
– Range of Uses – Versions – Quality
– Settings – Adaptability – Representation
– UoD – Automation – Type of Data
– Long-term – Complexity – Dependencies
– Short-term – Determinism – Languages
– Acquaintance – Explicative – Maintained
– Experience – Fuzzy-ness – Platforms
– Prerequisites – Granularity – Documentation
– Targeted User – Incremental – Multi-user
– Type – Iterative – User Base
– Assumptions – Language – Kind of Licence
– Data Source – Maturity – Multi-user
14/25 – Documentation – Method – User Base
– Model – Scalability – …

15. 2. Context
15/25

16. 2. Intent
16/25

17. 2. User
17/25

18. 2. Input
18/25

19. 19/25
2. Technique

20. 2. Output
20/25

21. 2. Implementation
21/25

22. 2. Tool
22/25

23. 3. Application
Currently,
– We classified 2 tools in details
– We classified 8 tools superficially
• JIAD, JFREEDOM, Refactoring Crawler,
Hammock graphs, Vanessa, web mining,
TraceScraper, FAMOOS
• Contact the authors
23/25

24. Conclusion
Comprehensive comparative framework
– Design recovery tools
– 8 concerns, 51 criteria
Improve criteria, ontology
Improve the use of the framework, web-
based questionnaires
Build a space of design recovery tools,
complete taxonomy
24/25 Benchmarks!

25. Future Work
We need YOU!
Tool builder? Know a cool tool? Please, contact us!
Soon to come, a web survey
7th WOOR’06 at ECOOP
25/25
guehene@iro.umontreal.ca, kim.mens@uclouvain.be, roel.wuyts@ulb.ac.be