Automating Software Design Metrics.

Abstract

The Rome Air Development Center has developed the Software Quality Framework as a means to specify software quality goals and measure software quality. Much of the work to date has focused on metrics applicable to software code. This report describes an effort undertaken to measure the quality of software products earlier in the software development life cycle, during the design phase, and to automate the capture of metric data from design media. Metrics of software quality, primarily those related to the criterion simplicity (or conversely, complexity), were reviewed. This review includes those metrics previously developed in the Software Quality Framework. Two metrics, Halstead's Software Science and McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity were chosen for their amenability to measurement during design and their potential for automation. Two design media were used: Design Aids for Real-Time Systems, an experimental automated design tool developed at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory; and Ada as a program design language.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1984
Accession Number
ADA145869

Entities

People

  • A. J. Rosner
  • J. B. Dewolf
  • N. M. Sodano
  • P. A. Szulewski

Organizations

  • Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Counting Methods
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • High Level Languages
  • Language
  • Life Cycles
  • Measurement
  • Programming Languages
  • Reliability
  • Software Design
  • Software Development
  • Software Metrics
  • Test And Evaluation

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Software Engineering.