Using software birthmarks to identify similar classes and major functionalities

  • Authors:

  • Takeshi Kakimoto;Akito Monden;Yasutaka Kamei;Haruaki Tamada;Masateru Tsunoda;Ken-ichi Matsumoto

  • Affiliations:

  • Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan;Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Mining software repositories
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Software birthmarks are unique and native characteristics of every software component. Two components having similar birthmarks indicate that they are similar in functionality, structure and im-plementation. Questions addressed in this paper include: Which are similar class files? Can they be gathered into one class file? What are major functionalities among class files? To answer to these questions, this paper analyzed the similarity of birthmarks for all pairs of classes in ArgoUML, and visualized them using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS). As a result, three pairs of very similar class files, which seem to be made by copy-and-paste programming, were identified. Also, four major functionalities were identified in the MDS space.