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7 CONCLUSIONS
We have presented an approach to context modeling
and context transition detection in software develop-
ment. The context model combines a structural and a
lexical dimensions, to represent the source code ar-
tifacts, structural relations and terms that are more
relevant for the developer in a specific moment in
time. The context transition detection mechanism al-
lows the context model to automatically adapt to the
changes in the focus of attention of the developer. We
have implemented a prototype that integrates our ap-
proach in Eclipse. This prototype was submitted to
an experiment with a group of developers to collect
statistical information about the context modelling
process and to manually validate the context transi-
tion mechanism. The statistical information collected
shows that the source code artifacts manipulated by
the developer are highly correlated, leading us to be-
lieve that the use of a context model to assess the rel-
evancy of a source code artifact to the developer is
very promising. The human evaluation of the con-
text transition mechanism was not conclusive, but the
results are nevertheless encouraging, considering the
fact that developers have some difficulties in under-
standing the concept of context transition.
As future work we plan to improve the context
modeling and context transition processes, taking into
consideration some of the issues that were identified.
Also, we want to evaluate if the lexical context can
be used to detect context transitions and how it would
impact the the current context transition mechanism.
Next, we want to apply the context model developed
to improve the context-based retrieval of source code
artifacts in the IDE. The context model can be used
to rank, elicit and filter source code artifacts based on
their proximity to the context model.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bruno Antunes is supported by the FCT scholarship
grant SFRH/BD/43336/2008, co-funded by ESF (Eu-
ropean Social Fund).
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