AUTOMATED OBJECT-ORIENTED REUSABLE COMPONENT IDENTIFICATION

An automated tool to assist in the understanding of legacy code can be useful both in the areas of software reuse and software maintenance. Most previous work in this area has concentrated on functionally-orien ted code. Whereas object-oriented code has been shown to be inherently more reusable than functionally-oriented code, in many cases the even tual reuse of the object-oriented code was not considered during devel opment. This paper describes an approach that makes preparing existing object-oriented code for reuse easier and more quantifiable. This pro blem includes two primary sub-problems: understanding the function of components, and applying an appropriate set of metrics to the componen ts to quantify reusability. The research described in this paper addre sses an approach to the automated understanding of object-oriented cod e. A knowledge-based system that implements the approach is described. This paper also briefly discusses the formulation of reusability metr ics for object-oriented code. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.