Design and Evaluating a Method Using Project Corpus for Inferring Software Description
Kohei Terakawa, Sinan Chen, Masahide Nakamura · 2023
Obsolete software developed in the past is gradually phased out over time. However, the source code of such software contains a wealth of information that can be re-purposed and possesses a high value as an asset. Thus, understanding the characteristics of existing software can aid in developing new software. In a previous study, we proposed a method for inferring the architecture of an existing system using a project corpus and conducted preliminary experiments to verify its feasibility. The findings revealed that the project corpus could be used to infer a system's purpose, functionality, and technology. In this present study, we confirm the validity of the project corpus from a perspective that was not examined in previous studies. We established three verification items and conducted an experiment in which we employed project corpus to infer the functionality of the system, the technology utilized in the system, and the architecture of the system. From the experiment results, we confirmed that the accuracy of the project's inference depends on two factors: first, that the project corpus accurately reflects the system's information, and second, the participants' familiarity with the words in the corpus.