Mapping Software Design Changes to Source Code Changes

The combination of evolutionary development processes and object-oriented methods results in iterative change in software design and source code. In this paper, we propose an approach of mapping object-oriented design changes to program changes, so that the prediction of possible source code change effort can be made. This approach focus on the definition and taxonomy of atomic changes and composite changes at both level, according to which change impact analysis algorithms are proposed and applied to conclude the change mapping rules from UML based design model to Java source code. A supporting tool implementing the heuristics is designed and a case study on an open source project is conducted to validate our method.