Class Responsibility Assignment as Fuzzy Constraint Satisfaction

We formulate the class responsibility assignment (CRA) problem as the fuzzy constraint satisfaction problem (FCSP) for automating CRA of high quality. Responsibilities are contracts or obligations of objects that they should assume, by aligning them to classes appropriately, quality designs realize. Typical conditions of a desirable design are having a low coupling between highly cohesive classes. However, because of a trade-off among such conditions, solutions that satisfy the conditions moderately are desired, and computer assistance is needed. Additionally, if we have an initial assignment, the improved one by our technique should keep the original assignment as much as possible because it involves with the intention of human designers. We represent such conditions as fuzzy constraints, and formulate CRA as FCSP. That enables us to apply common FCSP solvers to the problem and to derive solution representing a CRA. The conducted preliminary evaluation indicates the effectiveness of our technique.