About Refactoring

Refactoring is the use of small transformations to restructure code without changing any program behavior. Just as you factor an expression to make it easier to understand or modify, you refactor code to make it easier to read, simpler to understand, and faster to update. And just as a refactored expression must produce the same result, the refactored program must be functionally equivalent with the orginal source.

Some common motivations for refactoring code include:

The IDE's refactoring features simplify code restructuring by evaluating the changes that you want to make, showing you the parts of your application that are affected, and making all necessary changes to your code. For example, if you use the Rename operation to change a class name, the IDE finds every usage of that name in your code and offers to change each occurrence of that name for you.

See Also
Refactoring: Quick Reference
Finding Class, Method, and Field Usages
Finding and Replacing Text
Refactoring an Enterprise Bean

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