On evidential feature salience

Abstract

This paper describes a method for estimating the salience of features comprising conceptual descriptions of software artifacts. Salience estimates are used in a model analyzing the similarity between such descriptions so as to promote the analogical reuse of the artifacts described by them. Salience is conceived as belief on the dominance of a feature, which is defined on the basis of three general properties that a feature may have in a conceptual model, namely the abstractness, the characteristicity and the causality. This belief is measured according to evidence inherent in conceptual schemas organizing software repositories.