XRay Views: Understanding the Internals of Classes
Abstract
Understanding the internal workings of classes is a key prerequisite to maintaining an object-oriented software sys- tem. Unfortunately, classical editing and browsing tools of- fer mainly linear and textual views of classes and their im- plementation. These views fail to expose the semantic rela- tionships between the internal parts of a class. We propose XRay views —a technique based on Concept Analysis— which reveal the internal relationships between groups of methods and attributes of a class. XRay views are com- posed out of elementary collaborations between attributes and methods, and help the engineer to build a mental model of how a class works internally. In this paper we present XRay views, and illustrate the approach by applying it on the Smalltalk class UIBuilder.
Domains
Software Engineering [cs.SE]
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
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