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Improved binary similarity measures for software modularization

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Abstract

Various binary similarity measures have been employed in clustering approaches to make homogeneous groups of similar entities in the data. These similarity measures are mostly based only on the presence or absence of features. Binary similarity measures have also been explored with different clustering approaches (e.g., agglomerative hierarchical clustering) for software modularization to make software systems understandable and manageable. Each similarity measure has its own strengths and weaknesses which improve and deteriorate the clustering results, respectively. We highlight the strengths of some well-known existing binary similarity measures for software modularization. Furthermore, based on these existing similarity measures, we introduce several improved new binary similarity measures. Proofs of the correctness with illustration and a series of experiments are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of our new binary similarity measures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, Parit Raja, 86400, Malaysia

    Rashid Naseem & Mustafa Bin Mat Deris

  2. Department of Computer Science, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, 45320, Pakistan

    Onaiza Maqbool

  3. Division of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK

    **g-peng Li

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, 25120, Pakistan

    Sara Shahzad

  5. Faculty of Computer and Information Systems, Islamic University Madina, Madina, POBox 170, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Habib Shah

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  1. Rashid Naseem
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  2. Mustafa Bin Mat Deris
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  3. Onaiza Maqbool
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  4. **g-peng Li
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  5. Sara Shahzad
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  6. Habib Shah
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Correspondence to Rashid Naseem.

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Project supported by the Office of Research, Innovation, Commercialization and Consultancy (ORICC), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), Malaysia (No. U063)

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Naseem, R., Deris, M.B.M., Maqbool, O. et al. Improved binary similarity measures for software modularization. Frontiers Inf Technol Electronic Eng 18, 1082–1107 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1631/FITEE.1500373

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