RulePad: Interactive Authoring of Checkable Design Rules (2007.05046v2)

Abstract: Good documentation offers the promise of enabling developers to easily understand design decisions. Unfortunately, in practice, design documents are often rarely updated, becoming inaccurate, incomplete, and untrustworthy. A better solution is to enable developers to write down design rules which are checked against code for consistency. But existing rule checkers require learning specialized query languages or program analysis frameworks, creating a barrier to writing project-specific rules. We introduce two new techniques for authoring design rules: snippet-based authoring and semi-natural-language authoring. In snippet-based authoring, developers specify characteristics of elements to match by writing partial code snippets. In semi-natural language authoring, a textual representation offers a representation for understanding design rules and resolving ambiguities. We implemented these approaches in RulePad. To evaluate RulePad, we conducted a between-subjects study with 14 participants comparing RulePad to the PMD Designer, a utility for writing rules in a popular rule checker. We found that those with RulePad were able to successfully author 13 times more query elements in significantly less time and reported being significantly more willing to use RulePad in their everyday work.

• The paper introduces RulePad, a tool that facilitates interactive authoring of checkable design rules via snippet-based and semi-natural-language methods.
• A user study showed RulePad significantly increased the number of query elements authored and reduced the time needed compared to a traditional tool like PMD Designer.
• RulePad enables software developers to easily create and maintain design rules without mastering complex query languages, improving code consistency and documentation.

RulePad: Improving the Authoring of Design Rules in Software Development

The paper "RulePad: Interactive Authoring of Checkable Design Rules" explores innovative methodologies to enhance the process of authoring design rules by software developers. Documenting design rules is vital in maintaining code consistency and conveying the underlying design decisions to new members of a development team. Traditional documentation methods have shown deficiencies, such as becoming outdated or not reflecting the current state of the codebase. The authors of the paper address this issue by introducing RulePad, a novel tool that facilitates the interactive authoring of design rules without requiring developers to master complex query languages or program analysis frameworks.

Techniques Introduced

The core contribution of this paper is the proposal of two distinct methodologies for authoring design rules: snippet-based authoring and semi-natural-language authoring.

1. Snippet-based Authoring: This technique allows developers to use partial code snippets to express the design rules. These code snippets act as templates, which developers can manipulate interactively to define constraints, resembling a more code-oriented and intuitive method to capture design intents.
2. Semi-natural-language Authoring: Here, the authors propose a more flexible textual representation of design rules. This representation aligns more closely with natural language, allowing textual integration without the complexity of traditional query languages like XPath.

RulePad leverages these techniques to provide a graphical interface, a GRAPHICAL EDITOR, and a TEXTUAL EDITOR synchronized to allow easy refinement of design rules. The intuitive interface not only reduces the complexity but also aids in understanding how design rules are structured.

Evaluation and Findings

The evaluation involved a user paper comparing the performance of RulePad to that of PMD Designer, a utility for the PMD static rule checker. Results showed that RulePad enabled participants to create design rules more effectively, leading to a significant increase in the number of authored query elements—13 times more—and a reduction in the time required. Additionally, participants were more inclined to integrate RulePad into their workflow compared to PMD Designer, which highlights the usability advantages of the proposed system.

The authors document several challenges observed while using PMD Designer, including unclear notation expectations and inadequate documentation. RulePad, with its snippet-based and semi-natural-language methodologies, addresses these issues by simplifying rule synthesis.

Implications and Future Directions

The implications of this research are profound for both practical software engineering and theoretical inquiries into static code analysis tools. Practically, RulePad facilitates the creation and maintenance of checkable design rules without imposing steep learning curves on software developers. Theoretically, this work opens new avenues to further explore semi-natural-language processing within software engineering tools, potentially paving the way for enhanced static analysis and documentation methodologies.

In future developments, adapting RulePad to other programming languages and integrating more comprehensive pattern recognition features could increase its versatility and adoption. Furthermore, extending the tool's capabilities to cover runtime properties could further bridge the gap between static design intents and dynamic software behaviors.

The research presented in this paper marks a significant step forward in addressing the challenges associated with authoring design rules, offering promising methodologies that streamline the integration of design rule checking into everyday software development practices.