JMentor: An Ontology-Based Framework for Software Understanding and Reuse

Understanding and reusing complex APIs is a difficult and time consuming process, especially in legacy code and open-source software libraries and frameworks. While some primary API features are documented properly, most others lack enough documentation and design knowledge that can help developers find, understand, and reuse the needed software components and other library features. As such, the source-code itself is often the only reliable means for programmers to rely on when performing their reuse practices. In order to leverage program understanding and software reuse, this paper describes an ontology-based system named JMentor that we have developed for this purpose. Firstly, JMentor is capable of recovering the lost design decisions by reverse engineering design patterns. Secondly, JMentor provides a mechanism for locating and retrieving reusable software components. Thirdly, JMentor provides an approach for automatically recommending source-code snippets that show an example of how the user can properly reuse the retrieved components. JMentor mechanisms are based on ontology and semantic reasoning techniques. Its evaluation case studies show evidence that such techniques can improve software understanding and reuse practices.