How Far We Have Progressed in the Journey? An Examination of Cross-Project Defect Prediction
How Far We Have Progressed in the Journey? An Examination of Cross-Project Defect Prediction
复制标题
我们在这段旅程中已经进展到什么程度了？
DOI：
10.1145/3183339
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
Xu BW
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhou Yuming;Yang Yibiao;Lu Hongmin;Chen Lin;Li Yanhui;Zhao Yangyang;Qian Junyan;Xu BW
背景跨项目缺陷预测（cross-project defect prediction，CPDP）是一种将基于源项目的缺陷预测模型应用于目标项目的方法。目前，已经提出了各种（复杂）CPDP模型具有很好的预测性能。问题.大多数（如果不是全部）现有的CPDP模型没有与那些简单的模块尺寸模型进行比较，这些模型易于实现，并且在文献中的缺陷预测中表现出良好的性能。Objective.我们的目标是通过比较现有的CPDP模型和简单的模块大小模型之间的缺陷预测性能，来研究我们在这一过程中真正取得了多大的进展。法我们首先在目标项目中使用模块大小来构建两个简单的缺陷预测模型，ManualDown和ManualUp，它们不需要来自源项目的任何训练数据。ManualDown认为较大的模块更容易出现缺陷，而ManualUp认为较小的模块更容易出现缺陷。然后，我们采取以下措施，以确保现有的CPDP模型和简单的模块大小模型之间的缺陷预测性能的公平比较：使用相同的公开可用的数据集，使用相同的性能指标，并使用在原来的跨项目缺陷预测研究报告的预测性能。结果.简单的模块大小模型的预测性能相当，甚至上级的大多数现有的CPDP模型在文献中，包括许多新提出的模型。结论结果提醒我们，如果预测性能是目标，CPDP的真实的进展并没有像预期的那样实现。因此，我们建议未来的研究应包括ManualDown/ManualUp作为基线模型进行比较时，开发新的CPDP模型，以预测在一个完整的目标项目的缺陷。
Background. Recent years have seen an increasing interest in cross-project defect prediction (CPDP), which aims to apply defect prediction models built on source projects to a target project. Currently, a variety of (complex) CPDP models have been proposed with a promising prediction performance. Problem. Most, if not all, of the existing CPDP models are not compared against those simple module size models that are easy to implement and have shown a good performance in defect prediction in the literature. Objective. We aim to investigate how far we have really progressed in the journey by comparing the performance in defect prediction between the existing CPDP models and simple module size models. Method. We first use module size in the target project to build two simple defect prediction models, ManualDown and ManualUp, which do not require any training data from source projects. ManualDown considers a larger module as more defect-prone, while ManualUp considers a smaller module as more defect-prone. Then, we take the following measures to ensure a fair comparison on the performance in defect prediction between the existing CPDP models and the simple module size models: using the same publicly available data sets, using the same performance indicators, and using the prediction performance reported in the original cross-project defect prediction studies. Result. The simple module size models have a prediction performance comparable or even superior to most of the existing CPDP models in the literature, including many newly proposed models. Conclusion. The results caution us that, if the prediction performance is the goal, the real progress in CPDP is not being achieved as it might have been envisaged. We hence recommend that future studies should include ManualDown/ManualUp as the baseline models for comparison when developing new CPDP models to predict defects in a complete target project.