Stefan Schiffer

The EMISQ Method - Expert Based Evaluation of Internal Software Quality

Internal software quality, e.g. the quality of code, has great impact on the overall quality of software. Besides well known manual inspection and review techniques more recent approaches utilize tool-based static code for the evaluation of internal software quality. Despite the high potential of static code analyzers the application of tools alone cannot replace well founded expert opinion. Knowledge, experience and fair judgement is indispensable for a valid, reliable quality assessment, which is accepted by software developers and managers. The EMISQ method (evaluation method for internal software quality), guides the assessment process for all stakeholders of an evaluation project. The method is supported by a tool that assists evaluators with their analysis and rating tasks and provides support for generating a code quality report. The application of the method in a pilot project has shown its applicability.

The EMISQ method and its tool support-expert-based evaluation of internal software quality

There is empirical evidence that internal software quality, e.g., the quality of source code, has great impact on the overall quality of software. Besides well-known manual inspection and review techniques for source code, more recent approaches utilize tool-based static code analysis for the evaluation of internal software quality. Despite the high potential of code analyzers the application of tools alone cannot replace well-founded expert opinion. Knowledge, experience and fair judgment are indispensable for a valid, reliable quality assessment, which is accepted by software developers and managers. The EMISQ method (Evaluation Method for Internal Software Quality), guides the assessment process for all stakeholders of an evaluation project. The method is supported by the Software Product Quality Reporter (SPQR), a tool which assists evaluators with their analysis and rating tasks and provides support for generating code quality reports. The application of SPQR has already proved its usefulness in various code assessment projects around the world. This paper introduces the EMISQ method and describes the tool support needed for an efficient and effective evaluation of internal software quality.

Tool Support for ISO 14598 based code quality assessments

There is empirical evidence, that the internal quality of software has an important impact on the external, i.e., user perceptible software quality. Our Evaluation Method for Internal Software Quality (EMISQ) - based on the ISO 14598 standard for the evaluation of software products - provides the methodological framework for an expert centred assessment of internal software quality, which is supported by metric values and other findings provided by off-the-shelf static code analysis tools. To perform code quality assessments in a timely and efficient manner, it is inevitable to have tool support tailored to the needs of the evaluators. For that purpose we developed the Eclipsed based tool Software Product Quality Reporter (SPQR) that supports the EMISQ method to a large extent - from the formulation of project-specific quality models up to the generation of preliminary code quality reports. The application of SPQR already proved its usefulness in the execution of EMISQ projects.

On the Relation between External Software Quality and Static Code Analysis

Only a few studies exist that try to investigate whether there is a significant correlation between external software quality and the data provided by static code analysis tools. A clarification on this issue could pave the way for more precise prediction models on the probability of defects based on the violation of programming rules. We therefore initiated a study where the defect data of selected versions of the open source development environment ldquoEclipse SDKrdquo is correlated with the data provided by the static code analysis tools PMD and FindBugs applied the source code of Eclipse. The results from this study are promising as especially some PMD rulesets show a good correlation with the defect data and could therefore serve as basis for measurement, control and prediction of software quality.

Tool Support for Expert-Centred Code Assessments

There is empirical evidence that the code quality of software has an important impact on the external, i.e., user perceptible, software quality. Currently a large number of source code metrics exist that seem to ease the evaluation of code quality. Nevertheless, studies show that the theoretical foundations are weak and promising approaches for the automatic assessment of code quality are to be considered with great caution. We therefore came to the conclusion that the metric values and other findings provided by various static code analysis tools can only be used in the context of an expert-centred assessment of internal software quality. In order to be able to carry out code quality assessments in a timely and efficient manner it is inevitable to have additional tool support. For that purpose we developed the eclipsed based tool software product quality reporter (SPQR) that supports expert-centred evaluation of source code - from the formulation of project-specific quality models up to the generation of preliminary code quality reports. The application of SPQR already proved its usefulness in various code assessment projects around the world.

Design and implementation aspects of an experimental C++ programming environment

A good programming language alone is not sufficient for economic software production. The programming environment has a significant influence on the productivity of software engineers. Providing a programmer with information about an object‐oriented software system requires extracting information from the source code, e.g. class, method and variable names. We use separate structure files for holding this information and take advantage of proven tools such as make and the C preprocessor for keeping the structure files up to date and for processing software systems that heavily use macros.

Concepts and architecture of Vista-a multiparadigm programming environment

This paper describes Vista, a visual multiparadigm programming environment. We introduce the notion of processors and networks and discuss their application in the construction of event-driven and data-transformation systems. Further, we give an overview of Vistas object-oriented architecture.<<ETX>>