Recovering binary class relationships: putting icing on the UML cake

A discontinuity exists between object-oriented modeling and programming languages. This discontinuity arises from ambiguous concepts in modeling languages and a lack of corresponding concepts in programming languages. It is particularly acute for binary class relationships---association, aggregation, and composition. It hinders the traceability between software implementation and design, thus hampering software analysis. We propose consensual definitions of the binary class relationships with four minimal properties---exclusivity, invocation site, lifetime, and multiplicity. We describe algorithms to detect automatically these properties in source code and apply these on several frameworks. Thus, we bridge the gap between implementation and design for the binary class relationships, easing software analysis.

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