A Machine Learning based Efficient Software Reusability Prediction Model for Java Based Object Oriented Software

Software reuse refers to the development of new software systems with the likelihood of completely or partially using existing components or resources with or without modification. Reusability is the measure of the ease with which previously acquired concepts and objects can be used in new contexts. It is a promising strategy for improvements in software quality, productivity and maintainability as it provides for cost effective, reliable (with the consideration that prior testing and use has eliminated bugs) and accelerated (reduced time to market) development of the software products. In this paper we present an efficient automation model for the identification and evaluation of reusable software components to measure the reusability levels (high, medium or low) of procedure oriented Java based (object oriented) software systems. The presented model uses a metric framework for the functional analysis of the Object oriented software components that target essential attributes of reusability analysis also taking into consideration Maintainability Index to account for partial reuse. Further machine learning algorithm LMNN is explored to establish relationships between the functional attributes. The model works at functional level rather than at structural level. The system is implemented as a tool in Java and the performance of the automation tool developed is recorded using criteria like precision, recall, accuracy and error rate. The results gathered indicate that the model can be effectively used as an efficient, accurate, fast and economic model for the identification of procedure based reusable components from the existing inventory of software resources.