Code-tagging and similarity-based retrieval with myCBR

Code-tagging and similarity-based retrieval with myCBRThomas Roth-Berghofer & Daniel BahlsSenior researcher, [email protected] German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence DFKI GmbH

CAMBRIDGE, UK, 10 DEC 2008

Samstag, 18. Juli 2009

mailto:[email protected]


Programmer‘s dilemma


Programmer‘s dilemma

• Where is the code fragment I used to solve a similar problem in the past?

• Is this piece of code still available?

• Is it worth the effort to search for it?

• If so, what would be the right search term?


Personalised approach



• Personal vocabulary: tags




• Linking tags




• Linking tags

• Case-based retrieval




• Linking tags


• Work context




• Linking tags


• Work context

• Social dimension: tag exchange


CBR cycle

Agnar Aamodt and Enric Plaza. Case-based reasoning: Foundational issues, methodological variations, and system approaches. AI Communications, 7(1):39–59, 1994.


CBR cycle

Agnar Aamodt and Enric Plaza. Case-based reasoning: Foundational issues, methodological variations, and system approaches. AI Communications, 7(1):39–59, 1994.

myCBRCBR


Code snippet & context

Java code snippet


Code snippet & context

Work context

• java.net.URL

• java.net.URLConnection

• java.io.InputStream

• java.lang.StringBuffer

• java.io.BufferedReader

• java.lang.String

• java.lang.Exception

Java code snippet


Case structureAttribute Value type category

Tags String (multiple) Problem description

Context items String (multiple) Problem description

Code snippet String Solution

Document type String Provenance

Project name String Provenance

File path String Provenance

Author ID String Provenance

Creation date Long Provenance

Rating Float Maintenance

Rating count Integer Maintenance


Case structureAttribute Value type category

Tags String (multiple) Problem description

Context items String (multiple) Problem description

Code snippet String Solution

Document type String Provenance

Project name String Provenance

File path String Provenance

Author ID String Provenance

Creation date Long Provenance

Rating Float Maintenance

Rating count Integer Maintenance

Set by user

Set by coTag


Acquiring case


Query view

• Search for tags: init, logging config

• Include context => regard currently selected code


Retrieval

• Result for: init, logging, config

• Ranked list of code snippets


Presentation of cases


Situations in which explanations play a role

• Instructing explanations:• Novice users want to know about how tagging and (similarity-based)

retrieval works.

• Convincing explanations:• Regular users want to check when the retrieval does not meet their

expectations.

• Improving explanations• Regular users want to correct coTag‘s behaviour.


Explanation of matching

• Search terms: • init, logging, config

• Case tags: • init, Logger


Graphical explanation of trigram matching

• Syntactical similarity• Typos

• Stemming


Similarity customisation

• Tag similarities:

• Updates personal and community similarity measure

unsimilar 0%

partly similar 25%

similar 50%

very similar 75%

identical 100%


Three levels of similarity calculation

Personal

Imported

Trigram


Customised (personal) and imported similarity


Client-side architecture


Tag and exchange code snippets


Take home messages


• Re-finding information is a quite typical task in knowledge-work.

Take home messages



• Tagging is a helpful and well-known technique.

Take home messages




• Similarity-based retrieval can improve searches.

Take home messages




• Similarity-based retrieval can improve searches.

• Explanation-aware development of applications help you deal with increased complexity of similarity-based retrieval.

Take home messages


Code-tagging and similarity-based retrieval with myCBRThomas Roth-Berghofer & Daniel BahlsSenior researcher, [email protected] German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence DFKI GmbH

CAMBRIDGE, UK, 10 DEC 2008

Thank you!




Code-tagging and similarity-based retrieval with myCBR

Technology

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