DISTANCE: a framework for software measure construction.

In this paper we present a framework for software measurement that is specifically suited to satisfy the measurement needs of empirical software engineering research. The framework offers an approach to measurement that builds upon the easily imagined, detected and visualised concepts of similarity and dissimilarity between software entities. These concepts are used both to model the software attributes of interest and to define the corresponding software measures. Central to the framework is a process model that embeds constructive procedures for attribute modelling and measure construction into a goal-oriented approach to empirical software engineering studies. The underlying measurement theoretic principles of our approach ensure the construct validity of the resulting measures. The approach was tested on a popular suite of object-oriented design measures. We further show that our measure construction method compares favourably to related work.Software;

Conceptualizing Quality in Software Industry

This paper investigates the different software quality perceptions from the different stakeholders’ perspectives and presents a critique to previously developed quality models and measurement theory frameworks associated. It emphasizes the rationale beyond the selection of the Goal Question Metric (GQM) as an evaluation method for the development of the software project with the desired quality needs satisfying the software system. Then it ends up with several concluding remarks that pinpoint the main discussion points and offers guidance for further research

Evaluating data flow diagrams

Call number: LD2668 .T4 CMSC 1989 H83Master of ScienceComputing and Information Science

Quality modelling and metrics of Web-based information systems

In recent years, the World Wide Web has become a major platform for software applications. Web-based information systems have been involved in many areas of our everyday life, such as education, entertainment, business, manufacturing, communication, etc. As web-based systems are usually distributed, multimedia, interactive and cooperative, and their production processes usually follow ad-hoc approaches, the quality of web-based systems has become a major concern. Existing quality models and metrics do not fully satisfy the needs of quality management of Web-based systems. This study has applied and adapted software quality engineering methods and principles to address the following issues, a quality modeling method for derivation of quality models of Web-based information systems; and the development, implementation and validation of quality metrics of key quality attributes of Web-based information systems, which include navigability and timeliness. The quality modeling method proposed in this study has the following strengths. It is more objective and rigorous than existing approaches. The quality analysis can be conducted in the early stage of system life cycle on the design. It is easy to use and can provide insight into the improvement of the design of systems. Results of case studies demonstrated that the quality modeling method is applicable and practical. Practitioners can use the modeling method to develop their own quality models. This study is amongst the first comprehensive attempts to develop quality measurement for Web-based information systems. First, it identified the relationship between website structural complexity and navigability. Quality metrics of navigability were defined, investigated and implemented. Empirical studies were conducted to evaluate the metrics. Second, this study investigated website timeliness and attempted to find direct and indirect measures for the quality attribute. Empirical studies for validating such metrics were also conducted. This study also suggests four areas of future research that may be fruitful

Collected software engineering papers, volume 12

This document is a collection of selected technical papers produced by participants in the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) from November 1993 through October 1994. The purpose of the document is to make available, in one reference, some results of SEL research that originally appeared in a number of different forums. This is the 12th such volume of technical papers produced by the SEL. Although these papers cover several topics related to software engineering, they do not encompass the entire scope of SEL activities and interests. Additional information about the SEL and its research efforts may be obtained from the sources listed in the bibliography at the end of this document

An investigation of the utility and value of process patterns in the management of software development projects.

Pattern theory has engendered much controversy in the field of architecture; yet it has brought new insights to the field of software engineering. Patterns continue to play an important role in software engineering in general, and in software development in particular. In this study, two preliminary surveys, focusing on the two fields of architecture and software engineering, were carried out to investigate the role and effect of patterns. The surveys indicate that while, patterns are unpopular within the architecture community and are criticised for stifling creativity, software patterns are popular within the software community and a high proportion of software development companies use them in their development practice. The results however show that in the vast majority of cases, pattern usage is limited to design-based problems, involving a single type of pattern (i.e. design patterns). The results further show that process-based patterns are seldom used in the software development industry, which prompted the topic of the main investigation of this research to evaluate the effect and utility of process patterns. A controlled experimental research method was designed and used to evaluate the utility and value of process patterns in the management of software development projects. In this '2x2 factorial design' experiment, the subjects were divided in two groups of experimental and control, where the experimental groups were given a set of process patterns to use in their software development projects. Overall, there were over 750 subjects involved in this experiment and a total of 260 software development projects (individual and group projects) were investigated. Measurements of a number of appropriate software attributes were taken during the life of the projects though a devised goal-based measurement process. A further number of attributes were measured after the projects were completed. Using metrics, a number of software attributes across the four major phases of the development lifecycle (i.e. Requirement Analysis, Design, Implementation, and Delivery) were measured and statistically analysed. In addition to these specific measurement data, official marks awarded to the projects by the tutors were also used in the analysis. The objective was to determine if the experimental groups produced software projects that were of higher quality, in terms of the measured software attributes, than the control groups. The experiment results show that, in the case of thirteen measured attributes, the treated groups scored significantly higher than the control groups. The improvements are across all the four major development phases, with at least two attribute in each phase, showing significant improvement. The experiment, therefore, confirms that the application of process patterns in software development projects, improves the quality of the projects in terms of a number of specific attributes such as productivity and defect density. The results further show that the treated subjects in the group projects performed significantly better than those in the individual projects. This, therefore, confirms that while the application of process patterns significantly improves the quality of both group and individual projects, the improvement is more prominent in the case of team projects. Process patterns are thus shown to be more effective on team projects in improving the quality of software development projects

Modeling of Security Measurement (Metrics) in an Information System

Security metrics and measurement is a sub-field of broader information security field. This field is not new but it got very least and sporadic attention as a result of which it is still in its early stages. The measurement and evaluation of security now became a long standing challenge to the research community. Much of the focus remained towards devising and the application of new and updated protection mechanisms. Measurements in general act as a driving force in decision making. As stated by Lord Kelvin “if you cannot measure it then you cannot improve it”. This principle is also applicable to security measurement of information systems. Even if the necessary and required protection mechanisms are in place still the level of security remains unknown, which limits the decision making capabilities to improve the security of a system. With the increasing reliance on these information systems in general and software systems in particular security measurement has become the most pressing requirement in order to promote and develop the security critical systems in the current networked environment. The resultant indicators of security measurement preferably the quantative indicators act as a basis for the decision making to enhance the security of overall system. The information systems are comprised of various components such as people, hardware, data, network and software. With the fast growing reliance on the software systems, the research reported in this thesis aims to provide a framework using mathematical modeling techniques for evaluation of security of the software systems at the architectural and design phase of the system lifecycle and the derived security metrics on a controlled scale from the proposed framework. The proposed security evaluation framework is independent of the programing language and the platform used in developing the system and also is applicable from small desktop application to large complex distributed software. The validation process of security metrics is the most challenging part of the security metrics field. In this thesis we have conducted the exploratory empirical evaluation on a running system to validate the derived security metrics and the measurement results. To make the task easy we have transformed the proposed security evaluation into algorithmic form which increased the applicability of the proposed framework without requiring any expert security knowledge. The motivation of the research is to provide the software development team with a tool to evaluate the level of security of each of the element of the system and the overall system at the early development stages of the system life cycle. In this regard three question “What is to be measured?”, “where (in the system life cycle) to measure?” and “how to measure?” have been answered in the thesis. Since the field of security metrics and measurements is still in the its early stages, the first part of the thesis investigates and analyzes the basic terminologies , taxonomies and major efforts made towards security metrics based on the literature survey. Answering the second question “Where (in the system life cycle) to measure security”, the second part of the thesis analyzes the secure software development processes (SSDPs) followed and identifies the key stages of the system’s life cycle where the evaluation of security is necessary. Answering the question 1 and 2, “What is to be measured “and “How to measure”, third part of the thesis presents a security evaluation framework aimed at the software architecture and design phase using mathematical modeling techniques. In the proposed framework, the component based architecture and design (CBAD) using UML 2.0 component modeling techniques has been adopted. Further in part 3 of the thesis present the empirical evaluation of the proposed framework to validate and analyze the applicability and feasibility of the proposed security metrics. Our effort is to get the focus of the software development community to focus on the security evaluation in the software development process in order to take the early decisions regarding the security of the overall system

Open source software development and maintenance: an exploratory analysis

The purpose of this research was to create measures and models for the evaluation of Open Source Software (OSS) projects. An exploratory analysis of the development and maintenance processes in OSS was conducted for this purpose. Data mining and text mining techniques were used to discover knowledge from transactional datasets maintained on OSS projects. Large and comprehensive datasets were used to formulate, test and validate the models. A new multidimensional measure of OSS project performance, called project viability was defined and validated. A theoretical and empirical measurement framework was used to evaluate the new measure. OSS project data from SourceForge.net was used to validate the new measure. Results indicated that project viability is a measure of the performance of OSS projects. Three models were then created for each dimension of project viability. Multiple data mining techniques were used to create the models. Variables identified from process, product, resource and end-user characteristics of the project were used. The use of new variables created through text mining improved the performance of the models. The first model was created for OSS projects in the development phase. The results indicated that end-user involvement could play a significant role in the development of OSS projects. It was also discovered that certain types of projects are more suitable for development in OSS communities. The second model was developed for OSS projects in their maintenance phase. A two-stage model for maintenance performance was selected. The results indicated that high project usage and usefulness could improve the maintenance performance of OSS projects. The third model was developed to investigate the affects of maintenance activities on the project internal structure. Maintenance data for Linux project was used to develop a new taxonomy for OSS maintenance patches. These results were then used to study the affects of various types of patches on the internal structure of the software. It was found that performing proactive maintenance on the software moderates its internal structure

The SMPI model : a stepwise process model to facilitate software measurement process improvement along the measurement paradigms

Software engineering, software measurement, software process engineering, capability, maturityMagdeburg, Univ., Fak. für Informatik, Diss., 2007René Braungarte

A Mathematical Perspective For Software Measures Research

We identify and analyze basic principles which necessarily underlie software measures research. In the prevailing paradigm for the validation of software measures there is a fundamental assumption that the sets of measured documents are ordered, and that measures should report these orders. We describe mathematically the nature of such orders. Consideration of these orders suggests a hierarchy of software document measures, a methodology for developing new measures, and a general approach to the analytical evaluation of measures. We also point out the importance of units for any type of measurement and stress the perils of equating document structure complexity and psychological complexity. Keywords: software measures, abstractions of software documents, software structure, analytical evaluations of measures 1 Introduction This paper presents some underlying principles for software measures research. By "software measures" we mean measures which are obtainable directly from software d..