Applying machine learning to software fault-proneness prediction

The importance of software testing to quality assurance cannot be overemphasized. The estimation of a module’s fault-proneness is important for minimizing cost and improving the effectiveness of the software testing process. Unfortunately, no general technique for estimating software fault-proneness is available. The observed correlation between some software metrics and fault-proneness has resulted in a variety of predictive models based on multiple metrics. Much work has concentrated on how to select the software metrics that are most likely to indicate fault-proneness. In this paper, we propose the use of machine learning for this purpose. Specifically, given historical data on software metric values and number of reported errors, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is trained. Then, in order to determine the importance of each software metric in predicting fault-proneness, a sensitivity analysis is performed on the trained ANN. The software metrics that are deemed to be the most critical are then used as the basis of an ANN-based predictive model of a continuous measure of fault-proneness. We also view fault-proneness prediction as a binary classification task (i.e., a module can either contain errors or be error-free) and use Support Vector Machines (SVM) as a state-of-the-art classification method. We perform a comparative experimental study of the effectiveness of ANNs and SVMs on a data set obtained from NASA’s Metrics Data Program data repository.     

Deriving thresholds of software metrics to predict faults on open source software: Replicated case studies

Object-oriented metrics aim to exhibit the quality of source code and give insight to it quantitatively. Each metric assesses the code from a different aspect. There is a relationship between the quality level and the risk level of source code. The objective of this paper is to empirically examine whether or not there are effective threshold values for source code metrics. It is targeted to derive generalized thresholds that can be used in different software systems. The relationship between metric thresholds and fault-proneness was investigated empirically in this study by using ten open-source software systems. Three types of fault-proneness were defined for the software modules: non-fault-prone, more-than-one-fault-prone, and more-than-three-fault-prone. Two independent case studies were carried out to derive two different threshold values. A single set was created by merging ten datasets and was used as training data by the model. The learner model was created using logistic regression and the Bender method. Results revealed that some metrics have threshold effects. Seven metrics gave satisfactory results in the first case study. In the second case study, eleven metrics gave satisfactory results. This study makes contributions primarily for use by software developers and testers. Software developers can see classes or modules that require revising; this, consequently, contributes to an increment in quality for these modules and a decrement in their risk level. Testers can identify modules that need more testing effort and can prioritize modules according to their risk levels.     

Empirical analysis of network measures for predicting high severity software faults

Network measures are useful for predicting fault-prone modules. However, existing work has not distinguished faults according to their severity. In practice, high severity faults cause serious problems and require further attention. In this study, we explored the utility of network measures in high severity faultproneness prediction. We constructed software source code networks for four open-source projects by extracting the dependencies between modules. We then used univariate logistic regression to investigate the associations between each network measure and fault-proneness at a high severity level. We built multivariate prediction models to examine their explanatory ability for fault-proneness, as well as evaluated their predictive effectiveness compared to code metrics under forward-release and cross-project predictions. The results revealed the following: (1) most network measures are significantly related to high severity fault-proneness; (2) network measures generally have comparable explanatory abilities and predictive powers to those of code metrics; and (3) network measures are very unstable for cross-project predictions. These results indicate that network measures are of practical value in high severity fault-proneness prediction.     

An empirical analysis of package-modularization metrics: Implications for software fault-proneness

ContextIn a large object-oriented software system, packages play the role of modules which group related classes together to provide well-identified services to the rest of the system. In this context, it is widely believed that modularization has a large influence on the quality of packages. Recently, Sarkar, Kak, and Rama proposed a set of new metrics to characterize the modularization quality of packages from important perspectives such as inter-module call traffic, state access violations, fragile base-class design, programming to interface, and plugin pollution. These package-modularization metrics are quite different from traditional package-level metrics, which measure software quality mainly from size, extensibility, responsibility, independence, abstractness, and instability perspectives. As such, it is expected that these package-modularization metrics should be useful predictors for fault-proneness. However, little is currently known on their actual usefulness for fault-proneness prediction, especially compared with traditional package-level metrics.ObjectiveIn this paper, we examine the role of these new package-modularization metrics for determining software fault-proneness in object-oriented systems.MethodWe first use principal component analysis to analyze whether these new package-modularization metrics capture additional information compared with traditional package-level metrics. Second, we employ univariate prediction models to investigate how these new package-modularization metrics are related to fault-proneness. Finally, we build multivariate prediction models to examine the ability of these new package-modularization metrics for predicting fault-prone packages.ResultsOur results, based on six open-source object-oriented software systems, show that: (1) these new package-modularization metrics provide new and complementary views of software complexity compared with traditional package-level metrics; (2) most of these new package-modularization metrics have a significant association with fault-proneness in an expected direction; and (3) these new package-modularization metrics can substantially improve the effectiveness of fault-proneness prediction when used with traditional package-level metrics together.ConclusionsThe package-modularization metrics proposed by Sarkar, Kak, and Rama are useful for practitioners to develop quality software systems.     

Thresholds based outlier detection approach for mining class outliers: An empirical case study on software measurement datasets

Predicting the fault-proneness labels of software program modules is an emerging software quality assurance activity and the quality of datasets collected from previous software version affects the performance of fault prediction models. In this paper, we propose an outlier detection approach using metrics thresholds and class labels to identify class outliers. We evaluate our approach on public NASA datasets from PROMISE repository. Experiments reveal that this novel outlier detection method improves the performance of robust software fault prediction models based on Naive Bayes and Random Forests machine learning algorithms.     

Empirical analysis of network measures for effort-aware fault-proneness prediction

ContextRecently, network measures have been proposed to predict fault-prone modules. Leveraging the dependency relationships between software entities, network measures describe the structural features of software systems. However, there is no consensus about their effectiveness for fault-proneness prediction. Specifically, the predictive ability of network measures in effort-aware context has not been addressed.ObjectiveWe aim to provide a comprehensive evaluation on the predictive effectiveness of network measures with the effort needed to inspect the code taken into consideration.MethodWe first constructed software source code networks of 11 open-source projects by extracting the data and call dependencies between modules. We then employed univariate logistic regression to investigate how each single network measure was correlated with fault-proneness. Finally, we built multivariate prediction models to examine the usefulness of network measures under three prediction settings: cross-validation, across-release, and inter-project predictions. In particular, we used the effort-aware performance indicators to compare their predictive ability against the commonly used code metrics in both ranking and classification scenarios.ResultsBased on the 11 open-source software systems, our results show that: (1) most network measures are significantly positively related to fault-proneness; (2) the performance of network measures varies under different prediction settings; (3) network measures have inconsistent effects on various projects.ConclusionNetwork measures are of practical value in the context of effort-aware fault-proneness prediction, but researchers and practitioners should be careful of choosing whether and when to use network measures in practice.     

Using structural and textual information to capture feature coupling in object-oriented software

Previous studies have demonstrated the relationship between coupling and external software quality attributes, such as fault-proneness, and the application of coupling to software maintenance tasks, such as impact analysis. These previous studies concentrate on class coupling. However, there is a growing focus on the study of features in software, and features are often implemented across multiple classes, meaning class-level coupling measures are not applicable. We ask the pertinent question, “Is measuring coupling at the feature-level also useful?” We define new feature coupling metrics based on structural and textual source code information and extend the unified framework for coupling measurement to include these new metrics. We also conduct three extensive case studies to evaluate these new metrics and answer this research question. The first study examines the relationship between feature coupling and fault-proneness, the second assesses feature coupling in the context of impact analysis, and the third study surveys developers to determine if the metrics align with what they consider to be coupled features. All three studies provide evidence that feature coupling metrics are indeed useful new measures that capture coupling at a higher level of abstraction than classes and can be useful for finding bugs, guiding testing effort, and assessing change impact.     

Software quality estimation with limited fault data: a semi-supervised learning perspective

We addresses the important problem of software quality analysis when there is limited software fault or fault-proneness data. A software quality model is typically trained using software measurement and fault data obtained from a previous release or similar project. Such an approach assumes that fault data is available for all the training modules. Various issues in software development may limit the availability of fault-proneness data for all the training modules. Consequently, the available labeled training dataset is such that the trained software quality model may not provide predictions. More specifically, the small set of modules with known fault-proneness labels is not sufficient for capturing the software quality trends of the project. We investigate semi-supervised learning with the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm for software quality estimation with limited fault-proneness data. The hypothesis is that knowledge stored in software attributes of the unlabeled program modules will aid in improving software quality estimation. Software data collected from a large NASA software project is used during the semi-supervised learning process. The software quality model is evaluated with multiple test datasets collected from other NASA software projects. Compared to software quality models trained only with the available set of labeled program modules, the EM-based semi-supervised learning scheme improves generalization performance of the software quality models.     

A symbolic fault-prediction model based on multiobjective particle swarm optimization

In the literature the fault-proneness of classes or methods has been used to devise strategies for reducing testing costs and efforts. In general, fault-proneness is predicted through a set of design metrics and, most recently, by using Machine Learning (ML) techniques. However, some ML techniques cannot deal with unbalanced data, characteristic very common of the fault datasets and, their produced results are not easily interpreted by most programmers and testers. Considering these facts, this paper introduces a novel fault-prediction approach based on Multiobjective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO). Exploring Pareto dominance concepts, the approach generates a model composed by rules with specific properties. These rules can be used as an unordered classifier, and because of this, they are more intuitive and comprehensible. Two experiments were accomplished, considering, respectively, fault-proneness of classes and methods. The results show interesting relationships between the studied metrics and fault prediction. In addition to this, the performance of the introduced MOPSO approach is compared with other ML algorithms by using several measures including the area under the ROC curve, which is a relevant criterion to deal with unbalanced data.     

Empirical Analysis of Object-Oriented Design Metrics for Predicting High and Low Severity Faults

In the last decade, empirical studies on object-oriented design metrics have shown some of them to be useful for predicting the fault-proneness of classes in object-oriented software systems. This research did not, however, distinguish among faults according to the severity of impact. It would be valuable to know how object-oriented design metrics and class fault-proneness are related when fault severity is taken into account. In this paper, we use logistic regression and machine learning methods to empirically investigate the usefulness of object-oriented design metrics, specifically, a subset of the Chidamber and Kemerer suite, in predicting fault-proneness when taking fault severity into account. Our results, based on a public domain NASA data set, indicate that 1) most of these design metrics are statistically related to fault-proneness of classes across fault severity, and 2) the prediction capabilities of the investigated metrics greatly depend on the severity of faults. More specifically, these design metrics are able to predict low severity faults in fault-prone classes better than high severity faults in fault-prone classes     

Empirical validation of object-oriented metrics on open source software for fault prediction

Open source software systems are becoming increasingly important these days. Many companies are investing in open source projects and lots of them are also using such software in their own work. But, because open source software is often developed with a different management style than the industrial ones, the quality and reliability of the code needs to be studied. Hence, the characteristics of the source code of these projects need to be measured to obtain more information about it. This paper describes how we calculated the object-oriented metrics given by Chidamber and Kemerer to illustrate how fault-proneness detection of the source code of the open source Web and e-mail suite called Mozilla can be carried out. We checked the values obtained against the number of bugs found in its bug database - called Bugzilla - using regression and machine learning methods to validate the usefulness of these metrics for fault-proneness prediction. We also compared the metrics of several versions of Mozilla to see how the predicted fault-proneness of the software system changed during its development cycle.     

面向代码设计质量监控的软件度量指标集研究

随着软件的演化,软件规模和复杂性的上升往往会造成代码设计质量的退化,进而导致代码可维护性下降。已有大量软件度量指标用于量化代码设计质量,但是由于数量众多,不同指标体系度量结果可比性较差,使得开发人员难以找到存在设计质量问题的模块。系统调研并整理归类了现有的规模、耦合、内聚、封装、继承和多态等6方面软件度量指标。结合度量指标关系以及实验分析,从每个方面的指标集中发现了与代码设计质量关联度最高的6个指标,从而提出一种面向代码设计质量监控的软件度量指标集。实验表明,该指标集可以有效挑选出存在代码设计质量问题的类,可作为开发人员监控和定位代码设计问题的重点关注指标。     

Multi-dimensional information-driven many-objective software remodularization approach

Most of the search-based software remodularization (SBSR) approaches designed to address the software remodularization problem (SRP) areutilizing only structural information-based coupling and cohesion quality criteria. However, in practice apart from these quality criteria, there require other aspects of coupling and cohesion quality criteria such as lexical and changed-history in designing the modules of the software systems. Therefore, consideration of limited aspects of software information in the SBSR may generate a sub-optimal modularization solution. Additionally, such modularization can be good from the quality metrics perspective but may not be acceptable to the developers. To produce a remodularization solution acceptable from both quality metrics and developers’ perspectives, this paper exploited more dimensions of software information to define the quality criteria as modularization objectives. Further, these objectives are simultaneously optimized using a tailored many-objective artificial bee colony (MaABC) to produce a remodularization solution. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach, we applied it over five software projects. The obtained remodularization solutions are evaluated with the software quality metrics and developers view of remodularization. Results demonstrate that the proposed software remodularization is an effective approach for generating good quality modularization solutions.     

基于支持向量机的面向对象软件易发性故障预测

本文考虑软件故障严重程度,并采用C＆K面向对象度量集,以支持向量机分析方法为数学工具,建立一种基于面向对象软件易发性故障预测模型。实验结果表明,与基于朴素贝叶斯的预测模型、随机预测模型和NNge预测模型相比,本文提出的预测模型对于高严重程度故障、低严重程度故障以及未划分故障严重程度的情形均获得较好的预测效果。     

Software defect prediction using Bayesian networks

There are lots of different software metrics discovered and used for defect prediction in the literature. Instead of dealing with so many metrics, it would be practical and easy if we could determine the set of metrics that are most important and focus on them more to predict defectiveness. We use Bayesian networks to determine the probabilistic influential relationships among software metrics and defect proneness. In addition to the metrics used in Promise data repository, we define two more metrics, i.e. NOD for the number of developers and LOCQ for the source code quality. We extract these metrics by inspecting the source code repositories of the selected Promise data repository data sets. At the end of our modeling, we learn the marginal defect proneness probability of the whole software system, the set of most effective metrics, and the influential relationships among metrics and defectiveness. Our experiments on nine open source Promise data repository data sets show that response for class (RFC), lines of code (LOC), and lack of coding quality (LOCQ) are the most effective metrics whereas coupling between objects (CBO), weighted method per class (WMC), and lack of cohesion of methods (LCOM) are less effective metrics on defect proneness. Furthermore, number of children (NOC) and depth of inheritance tree (DIT) have very limited effect and are untrustworthy. On the other hand, based on the experiments on Poi, Tomcat, and Xalan data sets, we observe that there is a positive correlation between the number of developers (NOD) and the level of defectiveness. However, further investigation involving a greater number of projects is needed to confirm our findings.     

A new fuzzy rule based algorithm for estimating software faults in early phase of development

Estimation of reliability and the number of faults present in software in its early development phase, i.e., requirement analysis or design phase is very beneficial for developing reliable software with optimal cost. Software reliability prediction in early phase of development is highly desirable to the stake holders, software developers, managers and end users. Since, the failure data are unavailable in early phase of software development, different reliability relevant software metrics and similar project data are used to develop models for early software fault prediction. The proposed model uses the linguistic values of software metrics in fuzzy inference system to predict the total number of faults present in software in its requirement analysis phase. Considering specific target reliability, weightage of each input software metrics and size of software, an algorithm has been proposed here for developing general fuzzy rule base. For model validation of the proposed model, 20 real software project data have been used here. The linguistic values from four software metrics related to requirement analysis phase have been considered as model inputs. The performance of the proposed model has been compared with two existing early software fault prediction models.     

结合多元度量指标软件缺陷预测研究进展

软件缺陷预测可帮助开发人员提前预测缺陷程序,合理分配有限的测试资源。软件缺陷预测的准确度不仅依赖于预测方法的选择,更依赖于软件的度量指标。因此,结合多元度量指标进行软件缺陷预测已成为当前的研究热点。从度量指标出发,对传统度量指标、多元度量指标以及结合多元度量指标的缺陷预测的研究进展进行了系统介绍。主要工作包含：介绍了传统的代码和过程度量指标、基于传统度量指标的软件缺陷预测模型以及影响数据质量的因素;阐述了语义结构度量指标;分析列举了当前用于软件缺陷预测的评价指标;结合预测粒度、传统度量指标、语义结构度量指标、跨项目软件缺陷预测对多元度量指标软件缺陷预测未来的研究趋势进行了展望。     

An effective fault prediction model developed using an extreme learning machine with various kernel methods

System analysts often use software fault prediction models to identify fault-prone modules during the design phase of the software development life cycle. The models help predict faulty modules based on the software metrics that are input to the models. In this study, we consider 20 types of metrics to develop a model using an extreme learning machine associated with various kernel methods. We evaluate the effectiveness of the mode using a proposed framework based on the cost and efficiency in the testing phases. The evaluation process is carried out by considering case studies for 30 object-oriented software systems. Experimental results demonstrate that the application of a fault prediction model is suitable for projects with the percentage of faulty classes below a certain threshold, which depends on the efficiency of fault identification (low: 47.28%; median: 39.24%; high: 25.72%). We consider nine feature selection techniques to remove the irrelevant metrics and to select the best set of source code metrics for fault prediction.     

Extracting communication structure of a development organization from a software repository

Researchers have found that communication cost is one of the major overheads affecting the overall cost of software development. Actually, there could be communication problems caused by cultural difference, language barrier, different time zone, and, etc. in geographically distributed software development. Thus, extracting potential communication structural information is very useful in understanding and optimizing the development organization. Analyzing the communication structure is also crucial in order to resolve cost issues. While this is already true for general development organizations, geographically distributed software development organizations are especially sensitive to these issues because they are forced to rely on costly mediums. Therefore, this paper suggests a way to extract the development organization from software repositories with respect to the temporal locality. The temporal locality is important for when the project is prolonged for a lengthy period of time. In order to evaluate these issues, we define two metrics which measure contribution of the individual developer and communication need between developers. We also provide a tool to extract a communication structure using these two metrics. The extracted communication structure is visualized to give insight into managers and developers. Finally, we provide statistical results of empirical research to prove the soundness of our approach. The result shows that our approach reflects the real-world relationship between developers well.     

Predicting defect-prone software modules using support vector machines

Effective prediction of defect-prone software modules can enable software developers to focus quality assurance activities and allocate effort and resources more efficiently. Support vector machines (SVM) have been successfully applied for solving both classification and regression problems in many applications. This paper evaluates the capability of SVM in predicting defect-prone software modules and compares its prediction performance against eight statistical and machine learning models in the context of four NASA datasets. The results indicate that the prediction performance of SVM is generally better than, or at least, is competitive against the compared models.