Feature driven browsing

Abstract. Development environments typically present the software engineer with a structural perspective of an object-oriented system in terms of packages, classes and methods. From this perspective it is difficult to gain an understanding of how source entities participate in a system’s features at runtime, especially when using dynamic languages such as Smalltalk. In this paper we evaluate the usefulness of offering an alternative, complementary feature-centric perspective of a software system when performing maintenance activities. We present a feature-centric environment combining interactive visual representations of features with a source code browser displaying only the classes and methods participating in a feature under investigation. To validate the usefulness of our feature-centric view, we conducted a controlled empirical experiment where we measured and compared the performance of subjects when correcting two defects in an unfamiliar software system with a traditional d...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SMALLTALK
• Authors: David Röthlisberger, Orla Greevy, Oscar Nierstrasz
• Keywords: Complementary Feature-centric Perspective, Development Environment, Feature-centric Perspective, Programming Languages, SMALLTALK 2007