Functions are essential building blocks of information retrieval and information management. However, efforts implementing these functions are fragmented: one function has multiple implementations, within specific development contexts. This inhibits reuse: metadata of functions and associated implementations need to be found across various search interfaces, and implementation integration requires human interpretation and manual adjustments. An approach is needed, independent of development context and enabling description and exploration of functions and (automatic) instantiation of associated implementations. In this paper, after collecting scenarios and deriving corresponding requirements, we (i) propose an approach that facilitates functions’ description, publication, and exploration by modeling and publishing abstract function descriptions and their links to concrete implementations; and (ii) enable implementations’ automatic instantiation by exploiting those published descriptions. This way, we can link to existing implementations, and provide a uniform detailed search interface across development contexts. The proposed model (the Function Ontology) and the publication method following the Linked Data principles using standards, are deemed sufficient for this task, and are extensible to new development contexts. The proposed set of tools (the Function Hub and Function Handler) are shown to fulfill the collected requirements, and the user evaluation proves them being perceived as a valuable asset during software retrieval. Our work thus improves developer experience for function exploration and implementation instantiation.

功能是信息检索和信息管理的基本构建块。但是，实现这些功能的工作是分散的：在特定的开发上下文中，一个功能具有多种实现。这会抑制重用：需要在各种搜索界面中找到功能和相关实现的元数据，而实现集成则需要人工解释和手动调整。需要一种与开发上下文无关的方法，并且需要对功能和相关实现的（自动）实例化进行描述和探索。在本文中，在收集了场景并得出了相应的要求之后，我们（i）提出了一种有助于功能描述，发布，通过建模和发布抽象功能描述及其与具体实现的链接进行探索；（ii）通过利用那些已发布的描述来实现实现的自动实例化。这样，我们可以链接到现有的实现，并在整个开发上下文中提供统一的详细搜索界面。所提出的模型（功能本体）和遵循使用标准的链接数据原则的发布方法被认为足以完成此任务，并且可以扩展到新的开发环境。所示的拟议工具集（功能中心和功能处理程序）可以满足收集的要求，并且用户评估证明它们在软件检索期间被视为有价值的资产。