System and method for identifying oppotunities for refactoring in an object-oriented program

A method for rearranging entities in an object-oriented program, comprising:

• computing a property set for an entity, in a set of entities belonging to classes in said object-oriented program;
• identifying an entity having a maximum cardinality of the computed property set;
• from the set of entities, identifying any entity that satisfies a condition that the ratio of the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are in common with the property set of said entity having maximum cardinality to the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are not in common with the property set of said entity having maximum cardinality is greater than or equal to a threshold value;
• forming a sub-group comprising said entity having maximum cardinality of the computed property along with any identified entity that satisfies said condition;
• and
• removing entities that belong to said sub-group from said set of entities.

A method for rearranging entities in an object-oriented program, comprising the steps of:

• a) computing a property set for an entity, in a set of entities belonging to classes in said object-oriented program,
• b) identifying an entity having a maximum cardinality of the computed property set,
• c) from the set of entities, identifying any entity that satisfies a condition that the ratio of the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are in common with the property set of said entity having maximum cardinality to the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are not in common with the property set of said entity having maximum cardinality is greater than or equal to a threshold value,
• d) forming a sub-group comprising said entity having maximum cardinality of the computed property along with any identified entity that satisfies said condition,
• e) removing entities that belong to said sub-group from said set of entities, and
• f) repeating steps b), c), d) and e) for remaining entities in said set of entities.

A system for rearranging entities in an object-oriented program, comprising:

• a computing device for computing a property set for an entity, in a set of entities belonging to classes in said object-oriented program;
• an identifier to identify an entity having the highest cardinality of the computed property set and identifying any entity, from the set of entities, that satisfies a condition that the ratio of the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are in common with the property set of the entity having maximum cardinality to the number of elements in the property set of the identified entity that are not in common with the property set of the entity having maximum cardinality is greater than or equal to a threshold value;
• and
• a sub-group forming device for forming a sub-group comprising said entity having the highest cardinality of the computed property along with any identified entity that satisfies said condition.