An efficient prediction model for software reusability for Java-based object-oriented systems

Abstract

Software reuse is the process of creating new software systems with a likelihood of using existing software artefacts to add new functionalities with slight or no modification. It promises significant improvements in software quality and productivity by reducing implementation and testing time (with a consideration that prior testing and use has eliminated bugs) thereby making it cost effective. In this paper, we present an automation model for the identification and evaluation of reusable software to measure the software reusability levels (low, medium and high) of procedure-based object-oriented software systems. The presented approach uses a metric framework to compute functional analysis of object-oriented (OO)-based software components which take into account maintainability index to target essential attributes to predict reusability levels for reusability measurement. The presented approach works at the functional level rather than at the structural level. The performance of the presented automation model is recorded using criteria like precision, recall, accuracy and classification error. The model is implemented as a tool (JRM2I) in Java and results indicate that the model can be efficiently used as an economic model for the identification and prediction of procedure-based reusable components from the existing software reservoir.