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Volume 2, Number 4, October 2017 , pages 293-311 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/acd.2017.2.4.293 |
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Empirical assessment of design patterns\' fault-proneness at different granularity levels |
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Mawal A. Mohammed and Mahmoud O. Elish
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| Abstract | ||
| There are several claimed benefits for the impact of design patterns (DPs) on software quality. However, the association between design patterns and fault-proneness has been a controversial issue. In this work, we evaluate the fault-proneness of design patterns at four levels: the design level, category level, pattern level, and role level. We used five subject systems in our empirical study. As a result, we found that, at the design level, the classes that participate in the design patterns are less fault-prone than the non-participant classes. At the category level, we found that the classes that participate in the behavioral and structural categories are less fault-prone than the non-participant classes. In addition, we found that the classes that participate in the structural design patterns are less fault-prone than the classes that participate in the other categories. At the pattern level, we found that only five patterns show significant associations with fault-proneness: builder, factory method, adapter, composite, and decorator. All of these patterns except for builder show that the classes that participate in each one of them are less fault-prone than the non-participant classes in that pattern. The classes that participate in the builder design pattern were more fault-prone than the non-participant classes and the classes that participate in several patterns: the adapter, the composite, and the decorator design patterns. At the role level, the most significant differences were between the classes that participate in some roles and the non-participant classes. Only three pairs of design pattern roles show significant differences. These roles are concrete-product vs. concrete-creator, adapter vs. adaptee, and adapter vs. client. The results recommend the use of design patterns because they are less fault-prone in general except for the builder design pattern, which should be applied with care and addressed with more test cases. | ||
| Key Words | ||
| design patterns; fault-proneness; software quality | ||
| Address | ||
| Mawal A. Mohammed: Information and Computer Science Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia Mahmoud O. Elish: Computer Science Department, Gulf University for Science and Technology, Mishref, Kuwait | ||
