An observer design-pattern detection technique

The paper presents an approach for design patterns recognition in legacy code by the combination of static and dynamic analysis techniques. The implement process has three steps: static parser, SWRL rules and dynamic validation. The static parser translates the input source code into the AST. The protégé tool defines programming concepts with ontology model and design pattern into SWRL rules, and these SWRL rules are defined in OWL format, and then the code instances are constructed as OWL individuals and map to the individuals of the program ontology model. Finally, subsequent dynamic analysis is employed to confirm or weaken the results from static analysis. We discuss our approach for the Observer design pattern on a Java system.