Design Rationale Graphs

Most of the reasons why a piece of code is written as it is are lost over time. The loss of this information leads to code changes that do not respect the original rationale, often resulting in a loss of performance, a loss of flexibility and other undesirable outcomes.

Design Rationale Graphs (DRGs) are a representation of design documentation that localize the rationale behind design decisions and that can be linked to source code. Using a DRG, a developer can thus follow a design goal from its statement, through the rationale, and into the source. We believe this linkage can help software developers performing software evolution tasks.

Our work to date has focused on building and evaluating DRGs built from Design Patterns.