SE-CodeSearch: A scalable Semantic Web-based source code search infrastructure

Abstract

Available code search engines provide typically coarse-grained lexical search. To address this limitation we present SE-CodeSearch, a Semantic Web-based approach for Internet-scale source code search. It uses an ontological representation of source code facts and analysis knowledge to complete missing information using inference engine. This approach allows us to reason and search across project boundaries containing often incomplete code fragments extracted in a one-pass and no-order manner. The infrastructure provides a scalable approach to process and query across large code bases mined from software repositories and code fragments found online. We have implemented our SE-CodeSearch as part of SE-Advisor framework to demonstrate the scalability and applicability of our Internet-scale code search in a software maintenance context.