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Semantic Metrics for Object-Oriented Design
Point of Contact Dr. Letha Etzkorn
letzkorn@cs.uah.edu
Dates October 2002 - September 2003
Problem The purpose of this proposal is to research a new suite of object-oriented (OO) software metrics called semantic metrics that have the potential to help software engineers identify fragile, low quality code sections much earlier in the development cycle than is possible with traditional OO metrics. With earlier and better fault detection, software maintenance will be less time consuming and expensive, and software reusability will be improved. Because it is less costly to correct faults found earlier than to correct faults found later in the software lifecycle, the overall cost of software development will be reduced.
Objective Semantic metrics can be derived from the knowledge-base of a program understanding system. A program understanding system is designed to understand a software module. Once understanding is complete, the knowledge-base contains digested information about the software module. Various semantic metrics can be collected on the knowledge-base. This new kind of metric measures domain complexity, or the relationship of the software to its application domain, rather than implementation complexity, which is what traditional software metrics measure. A semantic metric will thus map much more closely to qualities humans are interested in, such as cohesion and maintainability, than is possible using traditional metrics, that are calculated using only syntactic aspe cts of software.
Results Training & Info Session.ppt
End of Year Briefing 2003.zip
First Quarter Status Report.doc
Complexity Metrics Test & Validation.zip
3rd Quarter Progress Report including information from Validation Task 1.zip
Keywords semantic metrics, object-oriented, software metrics, software lifecycle
Categories Code Analysis
Design Analysis
Domain-Specific Analysis
Requirements Analysis