Network motif and triad significance profile analyses on software system

There has been considerable recent interest in network motif for understanding network local features, as well as the growth and evolution mechanisms. In order to discover the local features in software networks, we extended the network motif research methods to software domain. After comparing triad significance profiles from 138 java open source software packages, we found three typical kinds of network motifs. Moreover, the software networks could be divided into 3 clusters which are consistent with the known super-families from various other types of networks. It seems that software scale and interaction may be the reasons causing different motif SP distribution. The concepts, the principles and steps associated with the experiment were elaborated, as well as the results were analyzed and discussed, the direction for further research was given.