Clone detection meets Semantic Web-based transitive closure computation

In this paper we discuss a new application of Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence in software analysis research. We show on a concrete example - clone detection for object-oriented source code that transitivity closure computation can provide added value to the clone detection community. Our novel approach models the domain of discourse knowledge as a mixture of source code patterns and inheritance trees represented as Directed Acyclic Graphs. Our approach promotes the use of Semantic Web and inference engines in source code analysis. More specifically we take advantage of the Semantic Web and its support for knowledge modeling and transitive closure computation to detect semantic source code clones not detected by traditional detection tools.