Interactive Duplicate Search in Software Documentation

TL;DR

This paper introduces an interactive method for detecting duplicates in software documentation, combining formal definitions, pattern-based techniques, and user involvement to improve documentation maintenance and reuse.

Contribution

It presents a novel interactive duplicate detection approach with a new formal definition and proof of completeness, validated on industrial project documents.

Findings

Effective duplicate detection in software documentation demonstrated

Interactive process improves search relevance and accuracy

Validated on multiple industrial project collections

Abstract

Various software features such as classes, methods, requirements, and tests often have similar functionality. This can lead to emergence of duplicates in their descriptive documentation. Uncontrolled duplicates created via copy/paste hinder the process of documentation maintenance. Therefore, the task of duplicate detection in software documentation is of importance. Solving it makes planned reuse possible, as well as creating and using templates for unification and automatic generation of documentation. In this paper, we present an interactive process for duplicate detection that involves the user in order to conduct meaningful search. It includes a new formal definition of a near duplicate, a pattern-based, and the proof of its completeness. Moreover, we demonstrate the results of experimenting on a collection of documents of several industrial projects.