Abstract
Developers and designers always strive for quality software. Quality software tends to be robust, reliable and easy to maintain, and thus reduces the cost of software development and maintenance. Several methods have been applied to improve software quality. Refactoring is one of those methods. The goal of this paper is to validate/invalidate the claims that refactoring improves software quality. We focused this study on different external quality attributes, which are adaptability, maintainability, understandability, reusability, and testability. We found that refactoring does not necessarily improve these quality attributes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1319-1326 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Information and Software Technology |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2009 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The author acknowledges the support of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. This work is done under JF-2005/07. Special thanks to Mr. Yaser Shabaan, Mr. Karim Elish and graduate students in ICS 511. The author also acknowledges the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this article.
Keywords
- Empirical study
- Quality improvement
- Refactoring
- Software metrics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Information Systems
- Computer Science Applications