Detecting Design Patterns in Object-Oriented Program Source Code by Using Metrics and Machine Learning

Abstract

Detecting well-known design patterns in object-oriented program source code can help maintainers understand the design of a program. Through the detection, the understandability, maintainability, and reusability of object-oriented programs can be improved. There are automated detection techniques; however, many existing techniques are based on static analysis and use strict conditions composed on class structure data. Hence, it is difficult for them to detect and distinguish design patterns in which the class structures are similar. Moreover, it is difficult for them to deal with diversity in design pattern applications. To solve these problems in existing techniques, we propose a design pattern detection technique using source code metrics and machine learning. Our technique judges candidates for the roles that compose design patterns by using machine learning and measurements of several metrics, and it detects design patterns by analyzing the relations between candidates. It suppresses false negatives and distinguishes patterns in which the class structures are similar. As a result of experimental evaluations with a set of programs, we confirmed that our technique is more accurate than two conventional techniques.