Case-based reasoning for software design reuse

Object-oriented software development is well known as a concept which allow efficient reuse of software components. Unfortunately, reuse of designs has received very little attention. With regard to reuse issue, several researches apply case-based reasoning (CBR) as their methodology which allows developers to reuse designs of previously developed software. Based on the CBR, reuse is achieved by retrieving a set of similar cases to a given query. Class diagram can be seen as a kind of case representation for design reuse process. This paper discusses an approach that can be used to retrieve class diagrams from case repository. Unlike most of the researches that have been conducted in the field, the novel approach does not only focus on label of classes when finding similar cases. In stead, the system retrieve similar cases or designs by considering number of matching diagram's elements including: class; relationship; direction; and multiplicity of classes. User then selects the most similar cases proposed by the system that suited them In order to produce an output which is ready to be used in most commercial software design tools, the result of matching is a set of class diagrams created by using XML language, which could be displayed in any UML tool. The approach has been implemented in an experimental system call "EaseDesign" in which the method clearly improve productivity of software designers