Identifying Key Classes Algorithm in Directed Weighted Class Interaction Network Based on the Structure Entropy Weighted LeaderRank

Identifying key classes can help software maintainers quickly understand software systems. The existing key class recognition algorithms consider the weight of class interaction, but the weight mechanism is single or arbitrary. In this paper, the multitype weighting mechanism is considered, and the key classes are accurately identified by using four kinds of interaction. By abstracting the software system into the directed weighted class interaction network, a novel Structure Entropy Weighted LeaderRank of identifying key classes algorithm is proposed. First, considering multiple types and directions of interactions between every pair of classes, the directed weighted class interaction software network (DWCIS-Network) is built. Second, Class Entropy of each class is initialized by the software structural entropy in DWCIS-Network; the Structure Entropy Weighted LeaderRank applies the biased random walk process to iterate Class Entropy. Finally, the iteration is completed to obtain the Final Class Entropy (FCE) of each class as the importance score of each class, top-k classes are obtained, and key classes are identified. For two sets of experiments on Ant and JHotDraw, our approach effectively identifies key classes in class-level software networks for different top-k of classes, and the recall rates of our approach are the highest, 80% and 100%, respectively. From top-15% to top-5%, the precision of our approach is improved by 13.39%, which is the highest in comparison with the precisions of the other two classical approaches. Compared with the best performance of the two classical approaches, the RankingScore of our approach is improved by 16.51% in JHotDraw.