Navigation spaces for the conceptual analysis of software structure

  • Authors:
  • Richard Cole;Peter Becker

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), The University of Queensland, QLD, Australia;School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), The University of Queensland, QLD, Australia

  • Venue:
  • ICFCA'05 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Formal Concept Analysis
  • Year:
  • 2005

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Information technology of today is often concerned with information that is not only large in quantity but also complex in structure. Understanding this structure is important in many domains – many quantitative approaches such as data mining have been proposed to address this issue. This paper presents a conceptual approach based on Formal Concept Analysis. Using software source code as an example of a complex structure we present a framework for conceptually analysing relational structures. In our framework, a browsable space of sub-contexts is automatically derived from a database of relations augmented by a rule engine and schema information. Operations are provided for the user to navigate between sub-contexts. We demonstrate how the use of these operations can lead to quick identification of an area of software source code that establishes an unecessary dependency between software parts.