Volume 15, No 2, 2018
Micro Level Source Code Summarization of Optimal Set of Object Oriented Classes
Mrinaal Malhotra and Jitender Kumar Chhabra
Abstract
Maintenance of software is effectively possible only after proper understanding of its modules and components. Optimal summary of the different components can help a lot in understanding their internal logic. Hence source code summaries must include the description of the functionalities and the intent behind the existence of various source code entities. In this paper we propose a new methodology for source code summarization performed at class level. The proposed methodology identifies an optimal set of classes which are more beneficial for summarization. Our generated summary includes all important information such as its properties, architectural details, its dependencies on other classes, internal implementation details and inheritance etc related information. This entire summary is generated in natural language using an automated process. An empirical study of the proposed approach has been carried out over seven open source software and qualitative evaluation also has been carried out for certain important classes with help of experienced developers. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of our proposed approach, our generated summary is compared with the competitive commonly used summarization method. The comparison is done using pyramid approach which uses weights as a means to compare two or more summaries. The results clearly suggest that our approach generates summaries are quantitatively as well as qualitatively more useful from comprehension as well as maintenance view point.
Pages: 113-132
Keywords: Summarization; Optimal set; Object oriented classes