Status report on software measurement

The most successful software measurement programs are ones in which researcher, practitioner, and customer work hand in hand to meet goals and solve problems. But such collaboration is rare. The authors explore the gaps between these groups and point toward ways to bridge them     

A new reusability metric for object-oriented software

Software Quality Journal - Software reuse is big business. Managers of software houses know that reuse can bring financial rewards to their company, so long as effective reuse procedures are in...     

Using use case patterns to estimate reusability in software systems

The applicability of using use case patterns as a basis for software cost estimation in the early stages of software development is described. This required the construction of a use case patterns catalogue using a novel process. The catalogue has been analysed to estimate the potential reusability in different software applications. This has shown that 43% of system functions are generally application domain independent, whereas 57% are application domain dependent. Statistical tests showed that the level of specialisation in software systems could be as low as 20%, which supports the direction taken in this research to build a use case patterns catalogue as a basis for the development of use case based software cost estimation models.     

软件构件的可复用性量化评价模型研究

软件构件的可复用性是构件区别于软件的最大特性,构件的可复用性将影响到最终的软件质量和应用,通过对构件的可复用性度量指标的分析,将特征分析法应用于指标的权重计算,采用模糊综合评判法进行可复用性指标的度量,构建了一个构件的可复用性量化评价模型并给出了应用实例.模型对构件库的建设、管理和应用有重要参考意义.     

An empirical investigation on the reusability of design patterns and software packages

Nowadays open-source software communities are thriving. Successful open-source projects are competitive and the amount of source code that is freely available offers great reuse opportunities to software developers. Thus, it is expected that several requirements can be implemented based on open source software reuse. Additionally, design patterns, i.e. well-known solution to common design problems, are introduced as elements of reuse. This study attempts to empirically investigate the reusability of design patterns, classes and software packages. Thus, the results can help developers to identify the most beneficial starting points for white box reuse, which is quite popular among open source communities. In order to achieve this goal we conducted a case study on one hundred (100) open source projects. More specifically, we identified 27,461 classes that participate in design patterns and compared the reusability of each of these classes with the reusability of the pattern and the package that this class belongs to. In more than 40% of the cases investigated, design pattern based class selection, offers the most reusable starting point for white-box reuse. However there are several cases when package based selection might be preferable. The results suggest that each pattern has different level of reusability.     

Software reusability

The work on reuse of software is reviewed, different types of reusable components are examined, the reuse technology is considered, and different directions of research of reusable software are described.Translated from Kibernetika, No. 3, pp. 46–50, May–June, 1989.     

The reusability challenge

The traditional “reuse or redo” dilemma is unacceptable; we need to reuse what is applicable to our current need and redo the rest. This is where object technology helps. The argument we examine-that object technology promotes reusability-has been one of the central claims of OO proponents since the field's emergence in the mid-1980s. The paper considers the features that make object oriented ideas so special in the quest for reusable software     

Analogously based reusability

A study is reported in which 10 expert analysts were requested to reuse a specification to develop a solution for an analogous problem. The study examined analytic and problem-solving strategies used by analysts to understand and reuse the analogous specification. Results revealed that painstaking and careful reuse of the specification was a critical determinant of analytic success, although results varied by individual. However, the reusable specification proved less effective for evaluation of the analyst's solution. Analysts preferred to assimilate and understand the analogy from a narrative describing the underlying reusable domain rather than from the reusable specification, hence knowledge about the problem domain appeared to be more important than solution knowledge in determining the analogy. Strategies employed by expert analysts have implications for didactic and reuse strategies incorporated in an intelligent advisor to assist inexperienced analysts to reuse analogous specifications.     

Status report: requirements engineering

It is argued that, in general, requirements engineering produces one large document, written in a natural language, that few people bother to read. Projects that do read and follow the document often build systems that do not satisfy needs. The reasons for the current state of the practice are listed. Research areas that have significant payoff potential, including improving natural-language specifications, rapid prototyping and requirements animation, requirements clustering, requirements-based testing, computer-aided requirements engineering, requirements reuse, research into methods, knowledge engineering, formal methods, and a unified framework, are outlined     

Status report: computer-aided prototyping

The application of prototyping, the construction and analysis of an executable model that approximates a proposed system, to software engineering is described. In the paper, the role of computer-aided prototyping in software development is assessed, the supporting technology necessary for prototyping to reach its potential is identified, and directions for future work are suggested     

Inter-operability and reusability: the science of annotation

Annotating linguistic data has become a major field of interest, both for supplying the necessary data for machine learning approaches to NLP applications, and as a research issue in its own right. This comprises issues of technical formats, tools, and methodologies of annotation. We provide a brief overview of these notions and then introduce the papers assembled in this special issue.     

Open source software adoption: a status report

Using the right software is increasingly critical to project success, but the choices keep getting wider and more confusing. Open source software (OSS) has entered the mix, leaving the traditional confines of the hacker community and entering large-scale, well-publicized applications. However, although some argue that it is ready for wide-scale commercial adaptation and deployment, the myriad number of OSS packages make actual adoption a real challenge. This article presents a straightforward and practical roadmap to navigate your OSS adoption considerations. We do not have a universally accepted definition of OSS. For instance, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, and Apple recently introduced what they call "community-source" versions of their popular software-the Mozilla project, Solaris, and MacOS X, respectively. Such efforts, while validating the OSS concept, also make their inclusion into the OSS community a potential topic for contention. We use the loose definition of OSS that includes publicly available source code and community-source software.     

Support for reusability in Genesis

Genesis is a software-engineering-based programming environment geared to support big software projects. The authors first discuss a reusability-driven development methodology that advocates software development based on reusability considerations. Then, they discuss the tools and techniques provided in Genesis to support this methodology. Techniques are suggested for improving the retrievability, composability, and understandability of software resources. Retrievability is improved by use of ESL (entity specification language) for tying resources through attributes and relations. Composability is improved through a mechanism called functional composition that provides considerably more generality than Unix pipes for composing programs. Understandability is improved by the use of program abstractors     

Knowledge reusability in diagnostic environments

ODS, object-based Diagnostic System, combines the features found in an object-oriented environment with an intelligent interrogator and can be used to build and execute diagnostic expert systems. ODS is designed to maximally reuse existing knowledge during the acquisition of new knowledge, as well as to reduce omissions and inconsistencies. It incorporates two techniques for making suggestion to the expert, one of which utilizes case-based reasoning.     

Modularity and reusability in attribute grammars

An attribute grammar is a declarative specification of dependence among computations carried out at the nodes of a tree. Attribute grammars have proven remarkably difficult to decompose into logical fragments. As a result, they have not yet been accepted as a viable specification technique. By combining the ideas of remote attribute access and inheritance, we have been able to define attribution modules that can be reused in a variety of applications. As an example, we show how to define reusable modules for name analysis that embody different scope rules.     

Metrics-based evaluation of learning object reusability

This paper aims to help in the selection of reusable educational materials from repositories on the web, developing an indicator of the reusability of learning objects. For this purpose, our research will be carried out in three stages. The first, based on previous studies in this area, will determine those aspects that influence reusability. The second will define a set of metrics that measure those aspects using metadata. The third will propose different methods of aggregation in order to obtain a single resulting value and evaluate the efficiency of the model by analyzing a significant set of learning objects obtained from the eLera and Merlot repositories. The results obtained suggest that the proposed indicator could provide useful information when searching for learning objects in repositories. This reusability measurement could constitute an indicator of quality, which would allow search results to be ordered, with those with the greatest possibility of being reused taking priority. Furthermore, the proposed reusability indicator could be calculated automatically or in an assisted way if metadata elements satisfy the minimum quality requisites identified.     

Statistical prioritization for software product line testing: an experience report

Software product lines (SPLs) are families of software systems sharing common assets and exhibiting variabilities specific to each product member of the family. Commonalities and variabilities are often represented as features organized in a feature model. Due to combinatorial explosion of the number of products induced by possible features combinations, exhaustive testing of SPLs is intractable. Therefore, sampling and prioritization techniques have been proposed to generate sorted lists of products based on coverage criteria or weights assigned to features. Solely based on the feature model, these techniques do not take into account behavioural usage of such products as a source of prioritization. In this paper, we assess the feasibility of integrating usage models into the testing process to derive statistical testing approaches for SPLs. Usage models are given as Markov chains, enabling prioritization of probable/rare behaviours. We used featured transition systems, compactly modelling variability and behaviour for SPLs, to determine which products are realizing prioritized behaviours. Statistical prioritization can achieve a significant reduction in the state space, and modelling efforts can be rewarded by better automation. In particular, we used MaTeLo, a statistical test cases generation suite developed at ALL4TEC. We assess feasibility criteria on two systems: Claroline, a configurable course management system, and Sferion?, an embedded system providing helicopter landing assistance.     

基于功能重用性的候选服务选定方法

基于SOA的服务建模在企业中得到了广泛运用,针对SOMA服务建模过程中基于用例间包含与扩展关系对可重用候选服务进行选定时存在功能重用性用例确定不准确的问题,给出了加入用例泛化关系的可重用候选服务选定方法,完善了可重用性候选服务的选定。实践表明,改进后的候选服务选定方法不仅使简化了可重用性候选服务选定过程,还提高了可重用性候选服务选定的准确率。