Refactoring in Large Software Projects: Performing Complex Restructurings Successfully

Books Details :

Author : Martin Lippert, Stephen Roock
Paperback: 286 pages
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (June 5, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0470858923
Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 0.6 inches

Book Description
Large Refactorings looks at methods of establish design improvements as an important and independent activity during development of software, and will help to ensure that software continues to adapt, improve and remain easy to read and modify without altering its observable behaviour. It provides real-world experience from real refactored projects and shows how to refactor software to ensure that it is efficient, fresh and adaptable.

About the Author
Stefan Roock works as a consultant and coach for it-agile GmbH (located in Germany). His areas of expertise include agile software development, refactoring techniques and agile project management and among his special interests are refactoring, incremental design and agile customer coaching. Stefan also is frequently a speaker at technical conferences and has published a number of papers and articles. He is co-author of the book "Extreme Programming in Action". You can contact him at stefan@stefanroock.de or http://www.stefanroock.de.

Martin Lippert works as a consultant and coach for it-agile GmbH (located in Germany) and is an expert on agile software development, refactoring techniques and Eclipse technology. His special interests include aspect-oriented programming, refactoring, incremental design and the Eclipse platform. Martin is a frequent speaker at technical conferences and has published a number of papers and articles. He is co-author of the book "Extreme Programming in Action". You can contact him at lippert@acm.org or http://www.martinlippert.com

Spotlight Reviews :

Reviewer: Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States)
The concept of refactoring code shouldn't be a new idea to most software developers, but often it's done on a very limited basis. In those cases, it may be possible to allow the IDE to take care of much of the renaming and such. But what happens when you want to make a major refactoring change that spans the entire system? Resources and best practices are a little more rare in that case. Stefan Roock and Martin Lippert attempt to address that situation in their book Refactoring in Large Software Projects.

Contents: Introduction; Refactoring - An Overview; Architecture Smells; Large Refactorings; Refactoring of Relational Databases; API Refactorings; Tool-Based Detection and Avoidance of Architecture Smells; Conclusion; Glossary; Index

This book will be most helpful at the architecture level of a system; that is, when you determine that you've painted yourself into a design corner. It may be necessary to introduce a new feature that is somewhat similar to an existing one, but you can't just kill off the old feature due to unknown usage by others. Roock and Lippert show how it's possible to make these wholesale changes in a manner that allows for a graceful degradation of current functionality without sacrificing the new design. It's also helpful if you've solely focused on refactoring at the code level. The term "code smells" refer to situations where code develops a "stench" due to bad design or practices. This book takes that concept and stretches it out to the design level. Even if you're not in a situation where you need to redesign a system to remove some architectural smells, you'll learn what types of designs will introduce those "aromas" and how to avoid them. Much better not to make the mistake up front, than to have to refactor it out later.

Not an easy read, and you'll probably find some areas a bit more useful or applicable to where you're at. But if you're responsible for a system that is showing some age and getting harder to maintain, this might be a book that helps you turn the situation around.