DP-Miner

A Stand-Alone Tool for Design Pattern Recovery

Objective

Design Patterns, as good solutions to recurring problems, are proved practically important and useful in the process of software development. They have been extensively applied in industry. They help to record design tradeoff, capture design decisions, and reuse expert experience. Many current software systems embed design pattern instances in system source code. When design patterns are applied and implemented in a system, however, the pattern-related information is usually lost in the source code. It is hard to trace such design information in source code. Recovering design pattern instances from system source code can greatly help to understand the systems and change them in the future.

DP-Miner

DP-Miner is intended to recover design patterns applied in software from source code. DP-Miner analyze structural, behavioral, and semantic characteristics of system and patterns. In structural analysis, DP-Miner presents system structure in a matrix with the columns and rows to be all classes in the system. The value of each cell represents the relationships among the classes. The structure of each design pattern is similarly represented in another matrix. The discovery of design patterns from source code becomes matching between the two matrices. If the pattern matrix matches the system matrix, a candidate instance of the pattern is found. Besides matrix, DP-Miner uses weight to represent the attributes/operations of each class and its relationships with other classes and compares system class weight to pattern class weight.

The latest version of DP-Miner is available here.

Currently it is able to recover four patterns, namely, Adapter, Bridge, Composite, and Strategy, from software that are written in Java. We already conducted experiments on four open source systems, Java.Awt, JUnit, JEdit, and JHotDraw, and the result is listed below.

Experiment Result

We have conducted experiments on four open-source systems, namely Java.awt package, JUnit, JEdit, JHotDraw.

Table 1 Experiment Result of Detecting Strategy Pattern in JHotDraw

	CONTEXT	STRATEGY	CONCRETE STATERGY
[0]	DrawApplet	Drawing	StandardDrawing	T
[1]	DrawApplet	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[2]	DrawApplet	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	F
[3]	PaletteButton	PaletteListener	DrawApplet, DrawApplication	T
[4]	StorageFormatManager	StorageFormat	StandardStorageFormat	T
[5]	UndoableAdapter	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	F
[6]	CommandButton	Command	UndoableCommand	T
[7]	StandardVersionControlStrategy	VersionRequester	DrawApplet, DrawApplication	T
[8]	UndoableHandle	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[9]	UndoRedoActivity	Undoable	UndoableAdapter	T
[10]	ToolButton	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[11]	SelectionTool	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[12]	AbstractTool	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[13]	AbstractTool	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[14]	EventDispatcher	Tool	UndoableTool	F
[15]	ConnectionTool	ConnectionFigure	LineConnection	T
[16]	UndoActivity	ConnectionFigure	LineConnection	T
[17]	AbstractCommand	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[18]	EventDispatcher	Command	UndoableCommand	F
[19]	StandardDrawingView	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[20]	StandardDrawingView	Drawing	StandardDrawing	T
[21]	StandardDrawingView	Painter	BufferedUpdateStrategy, FastBufferedUpdateStrategy, NullPainter, SimpleUpdateStrategy, ZoomUpdateStrategy, ClippingUpdateStrategy, PatternPainter	T
[22]	StandardDrawingView	PointConstrainer	GridConstrainer	T
[23]	DrawingViewKeyListener	Command	UndoableCommand	T
[24]	AbstractFigure	FigureChangeListener	FigureChangeAdapter, FigureChangeEventMulticaster, HTMLTextAreaFigure, TextAreaFigure, TextFigure	T
[25]	ChangeConnectionHandle	ConnectionFigure	LineConnection	T
[26]	ConnectionHandle	ConnectionFigure	LineConnection	T
[27]	DeleteFromDrawingVisitor	Drawing	StandardDrawing	T
[28]	FigureAndEnumerator	FigureEnumeration	FigureEnumerator, ReverseFigureEnumerator, SingleFigureEnumerator	T
[29]	HandleTracker	Handle	UndoableHandle	T
[30]	HandleAndEnumerator	HandleEnumeration	HandleEnumerator	T
[31]	InsertIntoDrawingVisitor	Drawing	StandardDrawing	T
[32]	NullDrawingView	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[33]	DrawApplication	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[34]	DrawApplication	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[35]	DrawApplication	Desktop	MDIDesktopPane, JPanelDesktop, JScrollPaneDesktop, SplitPaneDesktop	T
[36]	DragNDropTool	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[37]	JHDDragSourceListener	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[38]	JHDDragSourceListener	Undoable	UndoableAdapter, UndoRedoActivity	T
[39]	JHDDropTargetListener	DrawingEditor	DrawApplet, DrawApplication, JavaDrawViewer	T
[40]	JHDDropTargetListener	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[41]	JHDDropTargetListener	Undoable	UndoableAdapter, UndoRedoActivity	T
[42]	DisposableResourceManagerFactory	DisposableResourceHolder	StandardDisposableResourceHolder	T
[43]	DisposableResourceManagerFactory	DisposableResourceManager	StandardDisposableResourceManager	T
[44]	ETSLADisposalStrategy	DisposableResourceManager	StandardDisposableResourceManager	T
[45]	HTMLTextAreaFigure	DisposableResourceHolder	StandardDisposableResourceHolder	T
[46]	StandardDisposableResourceManager	ResourceDisposabilityStrategy	ETSLADisposalStrategy	T
[47]	TextHolderContentProducer	TextHolder	TextAreaFigure, TextFigure	T
[48]	ZoomTool	Tool	UndoableTool	T
[49]	CommandCheckBoxMenuItem	Command	UndoableCommand	T
[50]	CommandMenuItem	Command	UndoableCommand	T
[51]	CompositeFigureCreationTool	CompositeFigure	StandardDrawing, GraphicalCompositeFigure, PertFigure	T
[52]	MDIDesktopPane	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[53]	DesktopEventService	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	F
[54]	GraphicalCompositeFigure	Layouter	HTMLLayouter, SimpleLayouter	T
[55]	MiniMapView	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[56]	NestedCreationTool	CompositeFigure	StandardDrawing	T
[57]	SimpleLayouter	Layoutable	GraphicalCompositeFigure	T
[58]	TextAreaTool	TextHolder	TextAreaFigure, TextFigure	T
[59]	WindowMenu	Command	UndoableCommand	T
[60]	TextTool	TextHolder	TextAreaFigure, TextFigure	T
[61]	Animator	DrawingView	StandardDrawingView, NullDrawingView	T
[62]	Animator	Animatable	AnimationDecorator, BouncingDrawing	T
[63]	JavaDrawViewer	Drawing	StandardDrawing	F

Table 2 Manually Found Strategy Pattern Instances in JHotDraw that are missed by DP-Miner

	CONTEXT	STRATEGY
[1]	LineConnection	Connector
[2]	ChangeConnectionHandle	Connector
[3]	ConnectionTool	Connector
[4]	PolygonHandle	Locator
[5]	LocatorHandle	Locator
[6]	LocatorConnector	Locator
[7]	SelectionTool	DrawingView