Conceptual exploration of software structure: A collection of examples

Software systems are often highly structured, consisting of artifacts (types, methods, variables, and packages), and relationships between these artifacts. Domain models, meta models, and software design documentation provide additional artifacts such as roles, associations, use cases, and paragraphs of text. This paper describes, and demonstrates the use of a tool for software structure understanding. The tool consists of a knowledge base containing software artifacts, relationships between artifacts, and rules for generating new relationships. The knowledge base is then explored using formal concept analysis (FCA). Exploration of the software structure via FCA is useful in: (i) understanding the software structure, (ii) the recognition of parts of the software structure violating design principles, (iii) the reorganisation of type and package hierarchies, and (iv) retrieving artifacts of the software development process