A Code Transformation Approach To Enhance Code Cardinality Understanding

Abstract

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) have been recognized as universal and they have a vital effect on developing countries economies. However, to develop or maintain software systems for such SMEs, special structures should be considered for each type. In addition, to maintain existing software systems, software engineers face a big challenge while trying to understand their code first. To overcome such difficulties, several researchers have developed tools to support software maintenance engineers in understanding software code. They have set up different code interpretation rules to understand code structure such as classes, methods, attributes, and the relationships between classes. However, these tools lack the focus on transforming code cardinality. This paper proposes a code transformation approach to enhance the understandability of code structure with a focus on code cardinality. Therefore, a semi-automated approach that relies on five main transformation rules is introduced. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, two case studies were conducted using different project codes. The results show that compared to traditional approaches the proposed approach has decreased the time and effort consumed by developers to understand the investigated code.