Using refactoring and unification rules to assist framework evolution

Abstract

Although object-oriented software development has experienced the benefits of using frameworks, a thorough understanding of how to change them to meet evolving requirement needs is still object of research. Therefore framework development is very expensive, not only because of the intrinsic difficulty related to capturing the domain theory, but also because of the lack of appropriate methods and techniques to support the evolution and redesign of the framework architecture. This paper proposes the use of refactoring and unification rules to assist framework evolution. The approach is illustrated through the JUnit testing framework.