An Integrated Approach to Package and Class Code- to-Architecture Mapping Using InMap

Reflexion Modelling is a successful method used in industry for Software Architectural Consistency Checking (SACC). However, it includes a mapping step that is manual and tedious, especially for large complex systems. Various studies have shown how to successfully automate the interactive mapping of the basic units of the software’s codebase, i.e. its classes, to its architecture modules. However, their inherent drawback is that the effort required by an architect to review the mapping recommendations produced, whether during the mapping occurs or at the end of mapping, can be considerable. Subsequent studies have attempted to reduce this effort by use of a hierarchical mapping approach. These studies have demonstrated a reduction in the review effort required by a software architect; however, the gain in effort reduction occurred at the price of a lower recall and precision than similar non-hierarchical mapping approaches. In this study, we present an integrated approach of automated code-to-architecture mapping that draws from hierarchical (package mapping) and non-hierarchical (class mapping) techniques to keep effort minimal for an architect with marginal loss in recall and precision. Using the harmonic mean of f
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-scores and effort reduction, our results show that with our integrated approach, we could achieve 0.90 on average, compared to 0.87 for the other two methods.