A Catalogue of Model Smells and Refactoring Operations for Object-Oriented Software

The advent of Model Driven Engineering has promoted software quality assurance activities to a higher level of abstraction than code, i.e. architectural models. Early quality assessment facilitates better design, reduces maintenance costs, manages requirement volatility and leads to faster software development. Less than optimal design decisions made during development and subsequent evolution introduce smells in the software. Model Refactoring uncovers smells at architectural level and transforms graphical representations of software to enhance design without affecting its observable behaviour. Focusing on object-oriented software systems, this paper presents a catalogue of smells and refactoring operations for UML class diagrams. The paper concludes by highlighting challenges in model refactoring and the potential of learning-based approach in automating the process.