X-Ray Views on a Class using Concept Analysis

Within object oriented software, the minimal unit of development and testing is a class. So understanding how a class is defined and behaves is important. Considering that a class is composed of instance variables and methods, the process is not so easy to achieve because we must decide which different viewpoints can help us to detect features of a class. These viewpoints can include identifying groups of methods accessing a (set of) instance variable(s), groups of methods that interact among themselves to provide a functionality or groups of methods that behave as interface. Thus, with these different groups, we are able to know the different hidden characteristics of a class. In this position paper, we propose to apply Concept Analysis to generate the different groups of (collaborating) entities and use these groups to define different views. These views will help us to get the main features of a class.