research-article

Prioritization of Classes for Refactoring: A Step towards Improvement in Software Quality

Authors:

Ruchika Malhotra,

Priyanka KhoslaAuthors Info & Claims

WCI '15: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Women in Computing and Informatics

Pages 228 - 234

https://doi.org/10.1145/2791405.2791463

Published: 10 August 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Bad Smells are certain structures in the software which violates the design principles and ruin the software quality. In order to deals with the bad smells, often refactoring treatment is provided in the code which further improves the software quality. However, it's not possible to refactor each and every class of the software in maintenance phase due to certain deadlines. Prioritization of classes helps the developer to identify the software portions requiring urgent refactoring. In the current study, we propose a framework to identify the potential classes which immediately require refactoring based on the bad smells as well as design characteristics. We evaluate our approach on medium sized open-source systems ORDrumbox. Four types of code-smells Feature Envy, Long Method, God Class and Type Checking were identified and well known Chidamber and Kemerer metric suite is used to evaluate the object oriented characteristics. Both are combined in certain ratio to calculate new proposed metric Quality Depreciation Index Rule (QDIR) for each class. Classes are further arranged as per their QDIR values to identify the severely affected classes requiring immediate refactoring treatment. This study works on 80:20 principles conveying 80% of the code quality can be improved by just providing refactoring treatment to 20% of the severely affected classes. Results reflects that the bad smells and design metrics can be used as an important source of information to quantify the flaws in the classes, thus helpful to maintainers in performing their task under strict time constraints while maintaining the overall software quality.

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Cited By

Verma RKumar KVerma H(2024)Prioritizing God Class Code Smells in Object-Oriented Software Using Fuzzy Inference SystemArabian Journal for Science and Engineering10.1007/s13369-024-08826-949:9(12743-12770)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-024-08826-9
Shatnawi R(2024)Deriving change-prone thresholds from software evolution using ROC curvesThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-024-06366-5Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06366-5
Agnihotri MChug A(2024)Severity Factor (SF)Journal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.259036:5Online publication date: 25-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2590
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Prioritization of Classes for Refactoring: A Step towards Improvement in Software Quality
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Metrics
    2. Performance
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Software performance

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cover image ACM Other conferences

WCI '15: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Women in Computing and Informatics

August 2015

763 pages

ISBN:9781450333610

DOI:10.1145/2791405

Editor:
Indu Nair
SCMS, Kochi, India
,
General Chairs:
Sushmita Mitra
Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India
,
Ljiljana Trajković
Simon Fraser University, Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Punam Bedi
University of Delhi, India
,
Suzanne McIntosh
New York University and Cloudera Inc., USA
,
M. S. Rajasree
IIITM-K, Trivandrum, India

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

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Published: 10 August 2015

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WCI '15

WCI '15: Third International Symposium on Women in Computing and Informatics

August 10 - 13, 2015

Kochi, India

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WCI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 98 of 452 submissions, 22%;

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Cited By

Verma RKumar KVerma H(2024)Prioritizing God Class Code Smells in Object-Oriented Software Using Fuzzy Inference SystemArabian Journal for Science and Engineering10.1007/s13369-024-08826-949:9(12743-12770)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-024-08826-9
Shatnawi R(2024)Deriving change-prone thresholds from software evolution using ROC curvesThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-024-06366-5Online publication date: 20-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-024-06366-5
Agnihotri MChug A(2024)Severity Factor (SF)Journal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.259036:5Online publication date: 25-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2590
Verma RKumar KVerma H(2023)Code smell prioritization in object‐oriented software systemsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.253635:12Online publication date: 29-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.2536
Mishra AShatnawi RCatal CAkbulut A(2021)Techniques for Calculating Software Product Metrics Threshold Values: A Systematic Mapping StudyApplied Sciences10.3390/app11231137711:23(11377)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/app112311377
Chaniotaki ASharma T(2021)Architecture Smells and Pareto Principle: A Preliminary Empirical Exploration2021 IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)10.1109/MSR52588.2021.00031(190-194)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR52588.2021.00031
Alshammari TAlshayeb M(2021)Toward a Software Bad Smell Prioritization Model for Software MaintainabilityArabian Journal for Science and Engineering10.1007/s13369-021-05766-6Online publication date: 9-Jun-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13369-021-05766-6
Malhotra RSingh P(2020)Exploiting bad-smells and object-oriented characteristics to prioritize classes for refactoringInternational Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management10.1007/s13198-020-01001-xOnline publication date: 18-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-020-01001-x
Nagpal RSehgal RMehrotra D(2020)Decision Making on Critical Component Using Combined ApproachAutomated Software Testing10.1007/978-981-15-2455-4_8(143-165)Online publication date: 4-Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-2455-4_8
Anquetil NEtien AAndreo GDucasse S(2019)Decomposing God Classes at Siemens2019 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME.2019.00027(169-180)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME.2019.00027
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