Metrics for quantifying the disparity, concentration, and dedication between program components and features

Proceedings Sixth International Software Metrics Symposium (Cat. No.PR00403) Pub Date : 1999-11-04 DOI:10.1109/METRIC.1999.809740

W. E. Wong, S. Gokhale, J. R. Horgan

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引用次数: 10

Abstract

One of the most important steps towards effective software maintenance of a large complicated system is to understand how program features are spread over the entire system and their interactions with the program components. However, we must first be able to represent an abstract feature in terms of some concrete program components. We use an execution slice-based technique to identify the basic blocks which are used to implement a program feature. Three metrics are then defined, based on this identification, to determine quantitatively the disparity between a program component and a feature, the concentration of a feature in a program component and the dedication of a program component to a feature. The computations of these metrics are automated by incorporating them in a tool (/spl chi/Suds) which makes the use of our metrics immediately applicable in real-life contexts. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique by experimenting with a reliability and performance evaluator. Results of our study suggest that these metrics can provide an indication of the closeness between a feature and a program component which is very useful for software programmers and maintainers to better understand the system at hand.

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用于量化程序组件和功能之间的差异、集中和奉献的量度

要对一个大型复杂系统进行有效的软件维护，最重要的步骤之一是了解程序特性是如何分布在整个系统中的，以及它们与程序组件之间的相互作用。然而，我们必须首先能够用一些具体的程序组件来表示抽象特征。我们使用基于执行片的技术来识别用于实现程序功能的基本块。在此基础上，定义了三个度量标准，以定量地确定程序组件和功能之间的差异，程序组件中功能的集中程度以及程序组件对功能的奉献程度。这些指标的计算是通过将它们合并到一个工具(/spl chi/Suds)中自动进行的，这使得我们的指标可以立即应用于现实环境中。我们通过可靠性和性能评估器的实验证明了我们技术的有效性。我们的研究结果表明，这些度量可以提供功能和程序组件之间的密切程度的指示，这对于软件程序员和维护人员更好地理解手头的系统非常有用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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Proceedings Sixth International Software Metrics Symposium (Cat. No.PR00403)

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