An information retrieval approach for automatically constructing software libraries

A technology for automatically assembling large software libraries which promote software reuse by helping the user locate the components closest to her/his needs is described. Software libraries are automatically assembled from a set of unorganized components by using information retrieval techniques. The construction of the library is done in two steps. First, attributes are automatically extracted from natural language documentation by using an indexing scheme based on the notions of lexical affinities and quantity of information. Then a hierarchy for browsing is automatically generated using a clustering technique which draws only on the information provided by the attributes. Due to the free-text indexing scheme, tools following this approach can accept free-style natural language queries