Tullio Vernazza

A non-invasive approach to product metrics collection

Software metrics are useful means in helping software engineers to develop large and complex software systems. In the past years, many software metrics have been proposed in order to represent several different concepts such as complexity, coupling, inheritance, reuse, etc. However, this requires the collection of large volumes of metrics and, without flexible and transparent tools, is nearly impossible to collect data accurately. This paper presents the design and the implementation of a tool for collecting and analyzing product metrics in a non-invasive way.

Selecting components in large COTS repositories

The growing availability of COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) components in the software market has concretized the possibility of building whole systems based on components. In this multitude, a recurrent problem is the location and selection of the components that best fit the requirements. Commercial repositories that offer search mechanisms have reduced these difficulties: system integrators can rely on a wider variety of components and can focus better on the composition of systems. The size of the repository can be an initial obstacle but iterative approaches allow integrators to familiarize with the repositorys structure and to formulate eltecfive queries. This paper discusses the search techniques in CLARiFi, a component broker project that supports integrators in the selection of components for systems.

A relational approach to software metrics

There is still no standardization of software measures and metrics extraction tools have to be updated frequently to handle the changes. A possible solution is represented by using an intermediate abstraction layer to decouple the information extraction process from the use of the information. In this way a metrics researcher do not have to deal with language parsing production concepts such as declarations, class specifiers, and base clauses. This paper presents WebMetrics, an automated tool for software metrics collection. The tool uses, as intermediate layer, a set of intuitive relations to describe the source code structure. These relations are stored in a database in order to calculate metrics directly by performing SQL queries. To test the architecture, we applied the tool to the source code of an opensource project in order to compute CK metrics suite.

Analysis of the effects of software reuse on customer satisfaction in an RPG environment

This paper reports on empirical research based on two software products. The research goal is to ascertain the impact of the adoption of a reuse policy on customer satisfaction. The results show that when a systematic reuse policy is implemented, such as the adoption of a domain specific library: reuse is significantly positively correlated with customer satisfaction; and there is a significant increase in customer satisfaction. The results have been extended to the underlying populations, supposed normal.

Service Oriented Programming: A New Paradigm of Software Reuse

In recent years, web sites have evolved from simple collections of static content to suppliers of complex services to users. This evolution has allowed users to benefit from various customized services according to his needs. Currently many services are geographically-aware and they have localized features but do not communicate with systems that are complementary from a geographic of functional perspectives. However, the geographic extensity is a natural dimension on which simple services can be integrated into complex ones. This integration requires a container to provide a common and unifying view of the territory. A GIS with topological information is the ideal mapping for services that pertain to a given territory. Integration provides a way to create new services through reusing services that provide only a subset of functionality that could be used in very different integrated services. This paper analyzes the integration issues of localized services using a GIS.

Measures for mobile users: an architecture

Software measures are important to evaluate software properties like complexity, reusability, maintainability, effort required, etc. Collecting such data is difficult because of the lack of tools that perform acquisition automatically. It is not possible to implement a manual data collection because it is error prone and very time expensive. Moreover, developers often work in teams and sometimes in different places using laptops. These conditions require tools that collect data automatically, can work offiine and merge data from different developers working in the same project. This paper presents PROM (PRO Metrics), a distributed Java based tool designed to collect automatically software measures. This tool uses a distributed architecture based on plug-ins, integrated in most popular development tools, and the SOAP communication protocol.

Compatibility, standards, and software production

■ Compatibility is a key strategic decision in software production. Proposals exist for standards in several fields of software production, such as networking (ISO and IEEE), operating systems (Posix), and object management (OMG). However, a formal treatment of standards in software is still missing. This article tries to overcome this lack, presenting a model of the effects of compatibility in software production. It overviews existing work on compatibility; details a model on the effects of compatibility decisions in software development; and describes the application of this model to new products being introduced and to well-established incumbents. ompatibility is a key strategic decision in software production, in particular when the software development process is based on domain analysis and reuse. For some years software firms have been facing process improvement and product quality issues. However, few are conscious of the role of market structure in their operations. Often “experts,” following rules of thumb, perform the analysis of the application. They aim at identifying feasibility and potential return on investment, but usually do not consider in depth aspects related to market structure, such as compatibility and consumer network effects. Proposals exist for standards in several fields of software production, such as networking (ISO and IEEE), operating systems (Posix), and object management (OMG). However, a formal treatment of standards in software is still missing. This article describes a mathematical model of the effects of compatibility on software production and discusses the application of this model in different scenarios. Papers by Matutes and Regibeau [1988; 1992] are the base; references are also made to the proposals of Farrell and Saloner [1985; 1986] and to Katz and Shapiro [1985]. This paper is organized as follows. A review of the existing approaches is presented in Section 1. Section 2 proposes a framework to determine the effects of standards in software production. Section 3 analyses the conclusions coming from the application of the framework. Section 4 draws some conclusions and outlines future directions of this research.

Monitoring the development process with Eclipse

Monitoring the development process is a complex task due to the amount of resources required (i.e. time and money), moreover the correctness of collected data is not guaranteed if the required tasks are performed manually. This paper describes an extension of the Eclipse IDE environment to allow developers to collect data regarding the development process without any effort.

Object oriented process modeling with fuzzy logic

Fuzzy Logic has traditionally found an application in control theory, systems analysis, and artificial intelligence [9] [7]. However, it is very difficult to apply it to traditional software engineering. There is evidence that fuzzy logic can help in avoiding early assignment errors in SW engineering methods [1]. The authors have developed a technique that allows object oriented business process modeling. In this paper they propose a fuzzy logic extension to the method. Fuzzy sets can depict the uncertainty on the cost driver. Thus cost driver uncertainties have less impact on the model. The approach is new since it applies fuzzy logic to process modeling, and not to control or expert systems.

Non-invasive product metrics collection: an architecture

Software metrics are useful means in helping software engineers to develop large and complex software systems. In the past years, many software metrics have been proposed in order to represent several different concepts such as complexity, coupling, inheritance, reuse, etc. However, this requires the collection of large volumes of metrics and, without flexible and transparent tools, is nearly impossible to collect data accurately. This paper presents the design and the implementation of a tool for collecting and analyzing product metrics in a non-invasive way.