Effect of object oriented refactorings on testability, error proneness and other maintainability attributes

  • Authors:

  • György Hegedűs;György Hrabovszki;Dániel Hegedűs;István Siket

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary;University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary;University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary;University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Testing Object-Oriented Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Refactoring (object-oriented) code aims to improve some of the quality attributes of the software system under maintenance. However, as any other changes to a system, refactoring actions may have side-effects too, which need to be taken carefully into account during their implementation. Consequences of refactoring are only moderately discussed in literature. In this work, we emphasize the importance of documenting such consequences, by reviewing relevant literature and giving our views on the topic. We do this in three steps: first, we investigate how high level quality attributes (including testability and other maintainability aspects based on the ISO 9126 standard and fault proneness) can be estimated based on measurable metrics in the code, like complexity, size, and coupling. In the second step, we examine what effect of individual refactoring techniques can have on such metrics. Finally, we combine these findings to get a view on how refactoring can influence high level quality characteristics. With this work, we want to foster discussion in this important topic, rather than giving a solution to the problem, as it requires a vast amount of further research by the testing and software quality communities.