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Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems

Annals of Computer Science and Information Systems, Volume 35

Investigating the Effect of Partial and Real-Time Feedback in INMAP Code-To-Architecture Mapping

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15439/2023F5070

Citation: Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems, M. Ganzha, L. Maciaszek, M. Paprzycki, D. Ślęzak (eds). ACSIS, Vol. 35, pages 749–758 ()

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Abstract. InMap is an interactive and iterative information retrieval-based automated mapping algorithm that produces code-to-architecture mapping recommendations. In its original form, InMap requires an architect to provide feedback for each code-to-architecture mapping recommendation in a given set produced (complete feedback). However, architects may delay/defer deciding on some of the mapping recommendations provided. This leads us to ask, how would InMap perform if only a subset of the recommendations provided (partial feedback) or only a single recommendation (real-time feedback) is reviewed by the architect? Through carefully designed mapping experiments, we show that an architect giving partial or real-time feedback does not harm the recall and precision of the recommendations produced by InMap. On the contrary, we observed from the results of the systems tested a net increase of 2-5\% (depending on the approach). This shows that in addition to InMap's original complete feedback approach, the two new approaches of collecting feedback presented in this paper, i.e. partial and real-time, create flexibility in how software architecture consistency checking tool developers may choose to collect mapping feedback and how architects may opt-to provide feedback, with no harm to the recall and precision of the results.

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