A Model-Based Approach to Object-Oriented Software Metrics

The need to improve software productivity and software quality has put forward the research on software metrics technology and the development of software metrics tool to support related activities. To support object-oriented software metrics practice effectively, a model-based approach to object-oriented software metrics is proposed in this paper. This approach guides the metrics users to adopt the quality metrics model to measure the object-oriented software products. The development of the model can be achieved by using a top-down approach. This approach explicitly proposes the conception of absolute normalization computation and relative normalization computation for a metrics model. Moreover, a generic software metrics tool—Jade Bird Object-Oriented Metrics Tool (JBOOMT) is designed to implement this approach. The parser-based approach adopted by the tool makes the information of the source program accurate and complete for measurement. It supports various customizable hierarchical metrics models and provides a flexible user interface for users to manipulate the models. It also supports absolute and relative normalization mechanisms in different situations. This effort gets support from the National ‘863’ High-Tech Program and National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grant Nos.2001AA110236 and 60043002 respectively. It also gets support from National Excellent Young Scientists Foundation (Grant No.60125206) and Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of MOE (Grant No.20010001001). MEI Hong is a professor in computer science at Peking University. He got his Ph.D. degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1992. His research interests include software engineering and CASE tool, software reuse, software component technology, distributed object technology. YANG Fuqing is a professor in computer science at Peking University. She is memember of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She graduated from the Graduate School of Peking University in 1958. Her research interests include operating system, software engineering, CASE environment, software reuse and object-oriented technology.