DMCA
Recovering traceability links between code and documentation (2002)
Cached
Download Links
- [hiper.cis.udel.edu]
- [hiper.cis.udel.edu]
- [hiper.cis.udel.edu]
- [hiper.cis.udel.edu]
- DBLP
Other Repositories/Bibliography
| Venue: | IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng |
| Citations: | 326 - 41 self |
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{Antoniol02recoveringtraceability,
author = {Giuliano Antoniol and Gerardo Canfora and Gerardo Casazza and Andrea De Lucia and Ettore Merlo},
title = {Recovering traceability links between code and documentation},
journal = {IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng},
year = {2002},
pages = {970--983}
}
Share
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
OpenURL
Abstract
Abstract—Software system documentation is almost always expressed informally in natural language and free text. Examples include requirement specifications, design documents, manual pages, system development journals, error logs, and related maintenance reports. We propose a method based on information retrieval to recover traceability links between source code and free text documents. A premise of our work is that programmers use meaningful names for program items, such as functions, variables, types, classes, and methods. We believe that the application-domain knowledge that programmers process when writing the code is often captured by the mnemonics for identifiers; therefore, the analysis of these mnemonics can help to associate high-level concepts with program concepts and vice-versa. We apply both a probabilistic and a vector space information retrieval model in two case studies to trace C++ source code onto manual pages and Java code to functional requirements. We compare the results of applying the two models, discuss the benefits and limitations, and describe directions for improvements.
Keyphrases
traceability link manual page source code program item high-level concept information retrieval free text document related maintenance report requirement specification abstract software system documentation vector space information retrieval model case study meaningful name natural language free text java code system development journal program concept error log application-domain knowledge design document functional requirement describe direction
