Software Maintainability improvement by identification of the optimal refactoring sequences using Heuristic Search Algorithms

Abstract

newlineSoftware developer always strives for quality of the software. Quality software tends newlineto be more robust and easier to maintain, thereby reducing the software development and newlinemaintenance phase s cost. Software Maintenance is the most expensive phase of Software newlineDevelopment Lifecycle (SDLC) and therefore requires maximum effort and time. Any modification in the source code also introduces some bad smell which may be harmful for the newlinedesign of the source code. Bad smells represent the imperfection in the design of the software newlinesystem and trigger the urge to refactor the source code. The quality of Object-Oriented (OO) newlinesoftware has always been a major concern for the developer team and RTs help them to focus newlineon this aspect by transforming the code in a way such that the behaviour of the software can newlinebe preserved. Rigorous research has been done in this field to improve the quality of the software newlineusing various refactoring techniques. But one of the issues remains unsettled, i.e., the newlineoverhead effort to refactor the code to yield the maximum Maintainability Value (MV). These newlinebad smells get accumulated with every phase of the SDLC if not corrected timely, therefore, newlinethey need to be removed as early as possible with the help of refactoring which improves newlinethe internal attributes of the software without affecting the external attributes. Nowadays, newlineresearchers are focusing on the detection of optimum refactoring sequences well in advance newlineso that software maintenance cost can be reduced and subsequently the efforts may minimize. newlineSo, to complete the software under time and budget constraints, we have attempted to newlinedetermine the optimum sequence of Refactoring Technique (RT) in this thesis in advance so newlinethat maintenance team can directly apply them in order to remove the bad smell. newlineAs a prerequisite knowledge to carry out this research work, understanding of exception newlinehandling design smells are required. Therefore, nine different types of exception handling newlinedesign smells, namely careless cleanup, dummy handler,....