Marco Zanoni

• Ph.D.
• PostDoc Position at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

Code smells can be subjectively interpreted, the results provided by detectors are usually different, the agreement in the results is scarce, and a benchmark for the comparison of these results is not yet available. The main approaches used to detect code smells are based on the computation of a set of metrics. However, code smell detectors often u...

Code smells are symptoms of poor design choices. Previous studies assessed the impact of smells on bug-proneness of classes. In this paper, we build a specialized bug prediction model for smelly classes. We evaluate the contribution of a measure of the severity of code smells by adding it to existing models based on both product and process metrics...

To better understand and exploit the knowledge necessary to comprehend and evolve an existing system, different models can be extracted from it. Models represent the extracted information at various abstraction levels, and are useful to document, maintain, and reengineer the system. The Knowledge Discovery Metamodel (KDM) has been defined by the ob...

This paper explores and describes the state of the art for what concerns the model-driven approaches proposed in the literature to support reverse engineering. We conducted a systematic literature review on this topic with the aim to answer three research questions. We focus on various solutions developed for model-driven reverse engineering, outli...

Static source code analysis is an increasingly important activity to manage software project quality, and is often found as a part of the development process. A widely adopted way of checking code quality is through the detection of violations to specific sets of rules addressing good programming practices. SonarQube is a platform able to detect th...

Several code smells detection tools have been developed providing different results, because smells can be subjectively interpreted and hence detected in different ways. Machine learning techniques have been used for different topics in software engineering, e.g., design pattern detection, code smell detection, bug prediction, recommending systems....

Architecture erosion constitutes the most visible effect of the degradation of design. It is a major reason to address the design debt, often caused by architectural mismatch problems. Today, the identification of design erosion is a major concern for designers and software maintainers. Adequate tolos are necessary to identify and repair the debt....

During software development, maintenance and evolution, we can assess the quality of code, design and architecture to capture hints of possible problems and face them as soon as possible. We can capture signals of architecture erosion in different ways by exploiting several tools with the aim to identify architectural violations, architectural smel...

Code smells can be used to capture symptoms of code decay and potential maintenance problems that can be avoided by applying the right refactoring. They can be seen as a source of technical debt. However, tools for code smell detection often provide far too many and different results, and identify many false positive code smell instances. In fact,...

Several code smell detection tools have been developed providing different results, because smells can be subjectively interpreted, and hence detected, in different ways. In this paper, we perform the largest experiment of applying machine learning algorithms to code smells to the best of our knowledge. We experiment 16 different machine-learning a...

The detection of design patterns is a useful activity giving support to the comprehension and maintenance of software systems. Many approaches and tools have been proposed in the literature providing different results. In this paper, we extend a previous work regarding the application of machine learning techniques for design pattern detection, by...

Contemporary large software systems rely on complex software ecosystems for managing infrastructural tasks. While these ecosystems facilitate software development, the software architect must put care in not relying on assumptions on behaviors and policies of the ecosystem that may change with platform evolution. Based on our experience with develo...

When we develop a software project of a certain complexity, source code maintainability could become a problem, in particular if developers do not use a consolidate development process that simplifies the management of the entire project. When source code becomes very complex, it is difficult for developers to share and modify it. We can improve in...

Refactoring is one of the key practices in Extreme Programming and other agile methods. Duplicated code is one of the most pervasive and pungent smells to remove from source code through refactoring. Duplicated code has been largely studied in the literature, and different types of duplications, or “clones”, have been identified. Some studies analy...

In this paper, an approach for information systems reverse engineering is proposed and applied. The aim is to support a unified perspective to the reverse engineering process of both data and software. At the state of the art, indeed, many methods, techniques, and tools for software reverse engineering have been proposed to support program comprehe...

We can retrieve and integrate knowledge of different kinds. In this paper, we focus our attention on FLOSS (Free, Libre and Open Source Software) projects. With this aim, we introduce RepoFinder, a web application we have developed for the discovery, retrieval and analysis of open source software. RepoFinder supports a keyword-based discovery proce...

Previous research determined that the analysis of file changes in software repositories is useful for maintenance activities, like defect prediction. Changes rarely modify the entire file contents, but are usually localized in specific code regions.

Version Control Systems (VCSs) provide historical information that can be used to perform deep analyses on the evolution of a software project, with the aim of enhancing the quality of the system and predicting software evolution.

In the last years we have seen the rise and the fall of many version control systems. These systems collect a large amount of data spanning from the path of the files involved in changes to the exact text changed in every file. This data can be exploited to produce an overview about how the system changed over time and evolved. We have developed a...

In the last years we have seen the rise and the fall of many version control systems. These systems collect a large amount of data spanning from the path of the files involved in changes to the exact text changed in every file. This data can be exploited to produce an overview about how the system changed over time and evolved. We have developed a...

Developing software systems by reusing components is a common practice. FLOSS (Free, Libre and Open Source Software) components represent a significant part of the reusable components available. The selection of suitable FLOSS components raises important issues both for software companies and research institutions. RepoFinder supports a keyword-bas...

Several code smells detection tools have been developed providing different results, because smells can be subjectively interpreted and hence detected in different ways. Usually the detection techniques are based on the computation of different kinds of metrics, and other aspects related to the domain of the system under analysis, its size and othe...

To better support software maintenance and evolution, it is important to evaluate the quality of a system, identifying defects, code smells and anti patterns as hints to locate subsystems needing more effort and improvement. In this paper we focus our attention on the analysis of the possible correlations existing among code smells and between code...

Several studies have been proposed in the literature on software clones from different points of view and covering many correlated features and areas, which are particularly relevant to software maintenance and evolution. In this paper, we describe our experience on clone detection through three different tools and investigate the impact of clone r...

Many activities can be done to support software evolution and reverse engineering of a system. Design pattern detection is one of these activities. It is useful to gain knowledge on the design issues of an existing system, on its architecture and design quality, improving the comprehension of the system and hence its maintainability and evolution....

Code smells are structural characteristics of software that may indicate a code or design problem that makes software hard to evolve and maintain, and may trigger refactoring of code. Recent research is active in defining automatic detection tools to help humans in finding smells when code size becomes unmanageable for manual review. Since the defi...

Code smells are characteristics of the software that may indicate a code or design problem that can make software hard to evolve and maintain. Detecting and removing code smells, when necessary, improves the quality and maintainability of a system. Usually detection techniques are based on the computation of a particular set of combined metrics, or...

It is well known that software maintenance and evolution are expensive activities, both in terms of invested time and money. Reverse engineering activities support the obtainment of abstractions and views from a target system that should help the engineers to maintain, evolve and eventually re-engineer it. Two important tasks pursued by reverse eng...

Design pattern detection, or rather the detection of structures that match design patterns, is useful for reverse engineering, program comprehension and for design recovery as well as for re-documenting object-oriented systems. Finding design patterns inside the code gives hints to software engineers about the methodologies adopted and the problems...

One of the principal task in the context of reverse engineering is related to program comprehension activity, that can be performed through different techniques, tools and strategies. To better understand and exploit the knowledge necessary to comprehend an existing system different models and metamodels are necessary to represent the information e...

Design patterns detection is a useful activity in reverse engineering to gain knowledge on the design issues of an existing system, on its software architecture and design quality, improving in this way the comprehension of the system and hence its maintainability and evolution. Several tools have been developed, but they usually provide different...

It is well known that software maintenance and evolution are expensive activities, both in terms of invested time and money. Re- verse engineering activities support the obtainment of abstractions and views from a target system that should help the engineers to maintain, evolve and eventually re-engineer it. An important task pursued by re- verse e...

Legacy systems maintenance involves different decisions, often very complex and sometimes requiring high costs and time. Hence studying and applying the right system modernization technique becomes very important for systems evolution. One of the solutions often adopted to modernize a system is the possibility to migrate it towards a SOA architectu...

It is well known that software maintenance and evolution are expensive activities, both in terms of invested time and money. Reverse engineering activities support the obtainment of abstrac- tions and views from a target system that should help the engineers to maintain, evolve and eventually re-engineer it. Two important tasks pursued by reverse e...