Metrics for Dynamics: How to Improve the Behaviour of an Object Information System

If we ask about which is the main difference between modelling a system using a traditional model like the entity relationship model or an object oriented model, from our point of view the answer is that, in the first one, the processes are not located somewhere, and, in the second one, the processes (operations or methods) are encapsulated in classes. The choice of the right classes to home every operation is essential for the behaviour of the system. It is totally useless to design a well built system, according to a lot of statics metrics, if the system does not run well after. In other words, dynamic metrics allowing to evaluate the behaviour of a system when it runs are much more useful than any static metrics used to tell if the system is correctly built or not. According to this, we propose in this paper, a new approach to evaluate a priori the behaviour of a system, by taking into account the notion of event cost and the notion of time (which is obviously essential). The final goal of this approach is to deliver information on the way operations have to be placed in classes in order to get better performances when the system is running. However, the proposal of metrics is of no value if their practical use is not demonstrated, either by means of case studies taken from real projects or by controlled experiments. For this reason, an optimisation tool is being under construction in order to provide solutions to this proble

Some observations on the application of software metrics to UML models

In this position paper we discuss some of the existing work on applying metrics to UML models, present some of our own work in this area, and specify some topics for future research that we regard as important

Architecture design in global and model-centric software development

This doctoral dissertation describes a series of empirical investigations into representation, dissemination and coordination of software architecture design in the context of global software development. A particular focus is placed on model-centric and model-driven software development.LEI Universiteit LeidenAlgorithms and the Foundations of Software technolog

Software design metrics for predicting maintainability of service-oriented software

As the pace of business change increases, service-oriented (SO) solutions should facilitate easier maintainability as underlying business logic and rules change. To date, little effort has been dedicated to considering how the structural properties of coupling and cohesion may impact on the maintainability of SO software products. Moreover, due to the unique design characteristics of Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), existing Procedural and Object-Oriented (OO) software metrics are not sufficient for the accurate measurement of service-oriented design structures. This thesis makes a contribution to the field of SOC, and Software Engineering in general, by proposing and evaluating a suite of design-level coupling and cohesion metrics for predicting the maintainability of service-oriented software products early in the Software Development LifeCycle (SDLC). The proposed metrics can provide the following benefits: i) facilitate design decisions that could lead to the specification of quality SO designs that can be maintained more easily; ii) identify design problems that can potentially have a negative effect on the maintainability of existing service-oriented design structures; and iii) support more effective control of maintainability in the earlier stages of SDLC. More specifically, the following research was conducted as part of this thesis: - A formal mathematical model covering the structural and behavioural properties of service-oriented system design was specified. - Software metrics were defined in a precise, unambiguous, and formal manner using the above model. - The metrics were theoretically validated and empirically evaluated in order to determine the success of this thesis as follows: a. Theoretical validation was based on the property-based software engineering measurement framework. All the proposed metrics were deemed as theoretically valid. b. Empirical evaluation employed a controlled experimental study involving ten participants who performed a range of maintenance tasks on two SO systems developed (and measured using the proposed metrics) specifically for this study. The majority of the experimental outcomes compared favourably with our expectations and hypotheses. More specifically, the results indicated that most of the proposed metrics can be used to predict the maintainability of service-oriented software products early in the SDLC, thereby providing evidence for the validity and potential usefulness of the derived metrics. Nevertheless, a broader range of industrial scale experiments and analyses are required to fully demonstrate the practical applicability of the metrics. This has been left to future work