Automating the Establishment of Trace Links between UML Class Diagrams and Java Code by Model-based Heuristics
Pereszteghy, Benno Zoltán · University Library Linz repository (Johannes Kepler Universitat Linz) · 2025
Traceability is a critical aspect of software development, especially in safety-critical systems, yet it remains underutilized in many projects. This work addresses the challenge of automating fine-grained trace recovery between UML class diagrams and Java code through the introduction of the TraceFinderService, a system designed to enhance the Model-and-Code Consistency Checking (MCCC) of DesignSpace. By employing model-based heuristics, the TraceFinderService establishes fine-grained trace links that connect design artifacts to their corresponding code elements. Our research investigates three primary questions: the feasibility of automating trace recovery within the DesignSpace environment and the potential reduction of manual effort in MCCC processes. Through a series of experiments, we evaluate the performance of our heuristics and discuss the results, which show that the system achieves precision rates between 38.6% and 54.5% and recall rates from 56.0% to 78.0%. While these results indicate that our approach falls short compared to existing state-of-the-art techniques, these findings highlight opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness of model-based heuristics in future work.