Behavioral Pattern Identification through Visual Language Parsing and Code Instrumentation

In this paper we present a new technique able to recover behavioral design pattern instances which combines static analysis, based on visual language parsing, with dynamic analysis, based on source code instrumentation. In particular, the dynamic analysis is performed through the automatic instrumentation of the method calls involved in the candidate pattern instances identified during static analysis. The results obtained from a program monitoring activity are matched against the definitions of the pattern behaviors expressed in terms of monitoring grammars. We also present and discuss the results of a case study on JHotDraw 5.1 software library performed to assess the retrieval effectiveness of the proposed approach.