کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
978568 | 933292 | 2011 | 8 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |

Due to notable discoveries in the fast evolving field of complex networks, recent research in software engineering has also focused on representing software systems with networks. Previous work has observed that these networks follow scale-free degree distributions and reveal small-world phenomena, while we here explore another property commonly found in different complex networks, i.e. community structure. We adopt class dependency networks, where nodes represent software classes and edges represent dependencies among them, and show that these networks reveal a significant community structure, characterized by similar properties as observed in other complex networks. However, although intuitive and anticipated by different phenomena, identified communities do not exactly correspond to software packages. We empirically confirm our observations on several networks constructed from Java and various third party libraries, and propose different applications of community detection to software engineering.
► Class dependency software networks reveal significant community structure.
► Communities have similar properties as observed in other complex networks.
► Though anticipated by various phenomena, they do not correspond to software packages.
► Community detection can be employed to obtain highly modular software packages.
Journal: Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications - Volume 390, Issue 16, 15 August 2011, Pages 2968–2975