Measuring the coupling of procedural programs

Coupling is one of two attributes of software that have great impact on software quality. Quite a few methods have been established to quantify the measurement of coupling. This paper presents a new method that provides coupling measurement of procedural programs. The first step of this method populates a description matrix that describes the software system that is being evaluated capturing all system attributes that affect coupling. Factors that affect coupling were studied and a scheme to reflect them in the description matrix was developed. A method has also been developed to calculate coupling between each two components of the system. The second step uses this method to populate a coupling matrix that indicates the coupling measurement between each two components of the system. Other metrics such as calculating the overall coupling of the system can be evaluated from the generated matrix. One of the strengths of this approach is that it can be used to measure coupling of software of the procedural languages as well as object-oriented languages. The procedures that populate the description matrix are different for the two different paradigms but everything else is the same. A comparison with three other software metrics is illustrated with the result of two experiment

Measuring the coupling of procedural programs

Coupling is one of two attributes of software that have great impact on software quality. Quite a few methods have been established to quantify the measurement of coupling. This paper presents a new method that provides coupling measurement of procedural programs. The first step of this method populates a description matrix that describes the software system that is being evaluated capturing all system attributes that affect coupling. Factors that affect coupling were studied and a scheme to reflect them in the description matrix was developed. A method has also been developed to calculate coupling between each two components of the system. The second step uses this method to populate a coupling matrix that indicates the coupling measurement between each two components of the system. Other metrics such as calculating the overall coupling of the system can be evaluated from the generated matrix. One of the strengths of this approach is that it can be used to measure coupling of software of the procedural languages as well as object-oriented languages. The procedures that populate the description matrix are different for the two different paradigms but everything else is the same. A comparison with three other software metrics is illustrated with the result of two experiment

Using a Combination of Measurement Tools to Extract Metrics from Open Source Projects

Software measurement can play a major role in ensuring the quality and reliability of software products. The measurement activities require appropriate tools to collect relevant metric data. Currently, there are several such tools available for software measurement. The main objective of this paper is to provide some guidelines in using a combination of multiple measurement tools especially for products built using object-oriented techniques and languages. In this paper, we highlight three tools for collecting metric data, in our case from several Java-based open source projects. Our research is currently based on the work of Card and Glass, who argue that design complexity measures (data complexity and structural complexity) are indicators/predictors of procedural/cyclomatic complexity (decision counts) and errors (discovered from system tests). Their work was centered on structured design and our work is with object-oriented designs and the metrics we use parallel those of Card and Glass, being, Henry and Kafura's Information Flow Metrics, McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity, and Chidamber and Kemerer Object-oriented Metrics

Evaluation Criteria for Object-oriented Metrics

In this paper an evaluation model for object-oriented (OO) metrics is proposed. We have evaluated the existing evaluation criteria for OO metrics, and based on the observations, a model is proposed which tries to cover most of the features for the evaluation of OO metrics. The model is validated by applying it to existing OO metrics. In contrast to the other existing criteria, the proposed model is simple in implementation and includes the practical and important aspects of evaluation; hence it suitable to evaluate and validate any OO complexity metric

Document Type De�nition (DTD) Metrics

In this paper, we present two complexity metrics for the assessment of schema quality written in Document Type De�finition (DTD) language. Both "Entropy (E) metric: E(DTD)" and "Distinct Structured Element Repetition Scale (DSERS) metric: DSERS(DTD)" are intended to measure the structural complexity of schemas in DTD language. These metrics exploit a directed graph representation of schema document and consider the complexity of schema due to its similar structured elements and the occurrences of these elements. The empirical and theoretical validations of these metrics prove the robustness of the metrics

A STUDY OF QUALITY IN THE PROCESS OF SOFTWARE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO MAINTAINABILITY AND REUSABILITY

Our research indicates the modality by which algorithm modifications imply intervention in modules where expressions are evaluated or selections of elements are performed, the conclusion being the fact that in order to design robust software, a clear definition of the modules is necessary. Thus, the weak module which can be easily modified must be defined and placed so as not to affect other modules through modifications applied to them. The reusability issue is even more important as the main software producing companies have developed class libraries which reduce programming efforts. It is thus possible to start the realisation of software with personnel no larger than 15 people, but with high qualification and logistical resources. The problem of reusability occurs especially in the interference area. In designing interfaces, graphic elements are dominant, as well as those of information search-find. All this implies the definition of text placement and designing parts of the text which determine actions or operation selection. The problem of reusability occurs when in new software products conversions, compressions, sorting and optimisations as operations with extremely low proportion in the computing volume must be introduced, but which represent significant consume from the point of view of the programming effort.endogenous growth, horizontal differentiation, technological change, imperfect competition, human capital

An Approach for the Empirical Validation of Software Complexity Measures

Software metrics are widely accepted tools to control and assure software quality. A large number of software metrics with a variety of content can be found in the literature; however most of them are not adopted in industry as they are seen as irrelevant to needs, as they are unsupported, and the major reason behind this is due to improper empirical validation. This paper tries to identify possible root causes for the improper empirical validation of the software metrics. A practical model for the empirical validation of software metrics is proposed along with root causes. The model is validated by applying it to recently proposed and well known metrics

New Directions in Compensation Research: Synergies, Risk, and Survival

We describe and use two theoretical frameworks, the resource-based view of the firm and institutional theory, as lenses for examining three promising areas of compensation research. First, we examine the nature of the relationship between pay and effectiveness. Does pay typically have a main effect or, instead, does the relationship depend on other human resource activities and organization characteristics? If the latter is true, then there are synergies between pay and these other factors and thus, conclusions drawn from main effects models may be misleading. Second, we discuss a relatively neglected issue in pay research, the concept of risk as it applies to investments in pay programs. Although firms and researchers tend to focus on expected returns from compensation interventions, analysis of the risk, or variability, associated with these returns may be essential for effective decision-making. Finally ,pay program survival, which has been virtually ignored in systematic pay research, is investigated. Survival appears to have important consequences for estimating pay plan risk and returns, and is also integral to the discussion of pay synergies. Based upon our two theoretical frameworks, we suggest specific research directions for pay program synergies, risk, and survival

Quality factors and coding standards - a comparison between open source forges

Enforcing adherence to standards in software development in order to produce high quality software artefacts has long been recognised as best practice in traditional software engineering. In a distributed heterogeneous development environment such those found within the Open Source paradigm, coding standards are informally shared and adhered to by communities of loosely coupled developers. Following these standards could potentially lead to higher quality software. This paper reports on the empirical analysis of two major forges where OSS projects are hosted. The first one, the KDE forge, provides a set of guidelines and coding standards in the form of a coding style that developers may conform to when producing the code source artefacts. The second studied forge, SourceForge, imposes no formal coding standards on developers. A sample of projects from these two forges has been analysed to detect whether the SourceForge sample, where no coding standards are reinforced, has a lower quality than the sample from KDE. Results from this analysis form a complex picture; visually, all the selected metrics show a clear divide between the two forges, but from the statistical standpoint, clear distinctions cannot be drawn amongst these quality related measures in the two forge samples