Extracting NetBeans usage and interaction data

Hello,

for my PhD thesis, I plan to do some analysis on IDE usage and the 
interactions between developers and software development tools. Among 
others, two of the main goals are
1) recovering traceability links between development artifacts of 
different tools, and
2) identifying “best” and “bad” usage practices in order to assist the 
developer (e.g by giving hints or suggesting applicable functions).

Of course, there are already hints and other helpful things inside 
NetBeans, but my research is more aiming at the integration of different 
tools. So, for me, the IDE is not the main application, but one of many 
development-related tools, like also those for requirements engineering, 
diagramming, UI sketching and so on.

After this short introduction, here are (finally :) ) my questions:

Are there possibilities to hook into NetBeans’ internal event or action 
system in order to collect the desired data? Looking at the API 
documentation and development FAQs, I can only find access to the action 
pool (“Actions/” in the layer/file system) and the (maybe outdated?) 
“ActionManager” inside the “Actions APIs”. Until now, I don’t see any 
possibility to attach sth. like a “global ActionListener” which gets 
called every time any action is performed. Any hints for me?

Additionally, does some kind of data collection already exist, which I 
am missing? The “NetBeans Usage data tracking programm” doesn’t seem to 
collect the detailed data which I need, but could be a starting point to 
hook on. Is it possible to access this data tracking via an API? Are 
there any other data collecting mechanisms or event buses inside NetBeans?

I would be glad if someone could provide me any help, hints or further 
ideas on this.

Many thanks in advance and best regards
Dennis

P.S. sorry for the long text, but I thought it could be helpful to give 
an idea of what I try to achieve :)

-- 
Dennis Ziegenhagen, M.Sc.
Fachbereich 06
Institut für Informatik, AG Software Engineering
Universität Osnabrück
Wachsbleiche 27
Raum 50/510
49090 Osnabrück
Tel.: +49 541 969-7125
Fax:  +49 541 969-2799