Strategy for Detecting Functionalities

1 Introduction

Undoubtedly, one of the most complex and time consuming task in the life cycle of an application is the Software Maintenance and Evolution (SME) [3, 23]. The most time-consuming tasks in MES environment are those the programmer must execute to get a complete understanding of the system [7, 25]. It is from the need to assist the di cult understanding process previously mentioned that a discipline called Program Comprehension (CP) arises. The CP is presented as a useful and interesting area of research to boost the SME work through techniques and tools that assist Software Engineers in the analysis and understanding of systems.

Through numerous research in Cognitive Models and Learning Theories [10, 19, 29], some authors claim that the main challenge in this area is to relate the Problem Domain with the Program Domain [4, 18, 25]. The former refers to the system's output. The latter with the software components used to produce that output [4, 12, 27]. The reconstruction of this kind of relationship is very complex as it involves:

1) Build one or more representation of the Problem Domain.
2) Build one or more representation of the Program Domain.
3)Develop a linking procedure between these representations.

The three steps mentioned above are extremely important since its integration results in the development of 'real' comprehension strategies [4].

To create each of the representations mentioned above, rstly, it is necessary to extract information from both Domains. Therefore, we used techniques to obtain information related to certain aspects of program's structure and behavior. Such techniques are known, in the context of CP, as Information Extraction Techniques (IET). These could be classi ed based on the t...

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