Data mining library reuse patterns using generalized association rules

Abstract

In this paper, we show how data mining can be used to discover library reuse patterns in existing applications. Specifically, we consider the problem of discovering library classes and member functions that are typically reused in combination by application classes. This paper improves upon our earlier research using “association rules” [8] by taking into account the inheritance hierarchy using “generalized association rules”. This turns out to be a non-trivial but worthwhile endeavor.