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 iate 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. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.8 [Software Engineering]: Metrics - Product metrics General Terms Measurement. Keywords Software...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SAC
• Authors: Marco Scotto, Alberto Sillitti, Giancarlo Succi, Tullio Vernazza
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Metrics Extraction Tools, SAC 2004, Software Metrics, Software Metrics Collection