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Identifying Important Classes Of Large Software Systems Through K-Core Decomposition

Author

Listed:
  • P. MEYER

    (Department of Computer Science, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street Omaha, NE 68182-0500, USA)

  • H. SIY

    (Department of Computer Science, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street Omaha, NE 68182-0500, USA)

  • S. BHOWMICK

    (Department of Computer Science, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street Omaha, NE 68182-0500, USA)

Abstract

In a large software project, the number of classes, and the dependencies between them, generally increase as software evolves. The size and scale of the system often makes it difficult to easily identify the important components in a particular software product. To address this problem, we model software as a network, where the classes are the vertices in the network and the dependencies are the edges, and apply K-core decomposition to identify a core subset of vertices as potentially important classes. We study three open source Java projects over a 10-year period and demonstrate, using different metrics, that the K-core decomposition of the network can help us identify the key classes of the corresponding software. Specifically, we show that the vertices with the highest core number represent the important classes and demonstrate that the core-numbers of classes with similar functionalities evolve at similar trends.

Suggested Citation

  • P. Meyer & H. Siy & S. Bhowmick, 2014. "Identifying Important Classes Of Large Software Systems Through K-Core Decomposition," Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(07n08), pages 1-49.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:17:y:2014:i:07n08:n:s0219525915500046
    DOI: 10.1142/S0219525915500046
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