Title :
Supporting OO Design Heuristics
Author :
Churcher, Neville ; Frater, Sarah ; Huynh, Cong Phuoc ; Irwin, Warwick
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Software Eng., Canterbury Univ., Christchurch
Abstract :
Heuristics have long been recognised as a way to tackle problems which are intractable because of their size or complexity. They have been used in software engineering for purposes such as identification of favourable regions of design space. Some heuristics in software engineering can be expressed in high-level abstract terms while others are more specific. Heuristics tend to be couched in terms which make them hard to automate. In our previous work we have developed robust semantic models of software in order to support the computation of metrics and the construction of visualisations which allow their interpretation by developers. In this paper, we show how software engineering heuristics can be supported by a semantic model infrastructure. Examples from our current work illustrate the value of combining the rigour of a semantic model with the human mental models associated with heuristics.
Keywords :
object-oriented languages; object-oriented methods; programming language semantics; software metrics; software quality; OO design heuristics; human mental models; object-oriented languages; object-oriented semantic model infrastructure; software engineering; software quality; Cognitive science; Computer science; Humans; Q factor; Robustness; Software design; Software engineering; Software measurement; Software quality; Visualization; Heuristics; Metrics; OO Design; Semantic Model.; Software Engineering; Static Analysis; Visualisation;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering Conference, 2007. ASWEC 2007. 18th Australian
Conference_Location :
Melbourne, Vic.
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2778-7
DOI :
10.1109/ASWEC.2007.47