Java archives search engine using byte code as information source

Information from computer programs can be extracted from its source code, external documentation, and compiled code. Although compiled code is an assured information source which is always exists in published computer programs, it is seldom used by the existing search engines since some reverse engineering tasks are needed. In this research, a search engine for Java archives that uses byte code (compiled code for Java Archive) as its information source is developed. It enables user to search within a collection of Java Archives without relying with source code and external documentation. Compared with Penta and FindJar [2] [7], A novel term extraction process beyond the file and class name is proposed, which includes field name, method name, string literal used in program, program flow weighting, and method expansion. Exclusive tokenization, stopping, and stemming are also implemented to improve effectiveness. Based on evaluation, it has a fairly good effectiveness although it may vary based on terms stored on index. Its effectiveness is higher than FindJar main features reimplementation which indicates that detailed compiled code has positive influences in computer programs search engine. Efficiency depends on how many terms stored on index and how many process used at certain step.