Applying ISO 9126 metrics to MDD projects

2010

The quality of the software is critical and essential in different types of organizations. In some types of software, poor quality of the software product in sensitive systems (such as: real-time systems, control systems, etc.) may lead to loss of human life, permanent injury, mission failure, or financial loss. In software engineering literature, there are a number of quality models in which they contain a number of quality characteristics (or factors, as called in some models). These quality characteristics could be used to reflect the quality of the software product from the view of that characteristic. Selecting which one of the quality models to use is a real challenge. In this paper, we will discuss the contents of the following quality models: McCall's quality model, Boehm's quality model, Dromey's quality model, FURPS quality model and ISO 9126 quality model. In addition, we will focus on a comparison between these quality models, and find the key differences between them.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

This paper presents some related work on quality frameworks and requirements for evaluating them. It also discusses characteristics of modeldriven engineering that are important when building a quality framework, such as its use of models in several stages of development and maintenance, generation of other artifacts from models and its multi-abstraction level approach that requires consistency and traceability. We present a 7-step process on how to define a quality framework that is adapted to model-driven engineering, and which integrates quality engineering with quality evaluation. As an example, the framework is applied on transformation quality. We maintain that the transformation process and transformation mapping should be discussed separately, as they require different approaches, and suggest quality goals, quality-carrying properties to achieve the quality goals and methods for evaluating these properties.

The main focus of Software Engineering discipline is to establishing methods and processes for the effective and efficient development of software projects. One of the most relevant paradigms for achieving this goal is Model-Driven Development (MDD). MDD uses models at different abstraction levels to automatically generate software products by means of model-transformations. However, one of the main issues related to the development of MDD technologies is the lack of standardization in terms of the features that need to be considered to support the current industry needs. This difficults the comparison of existing technologies since there are not a reference point for the creation of new MDD approaches with their corresponding supporting tools. This paper analyses these industry needs through an exploratory study. From the results obtained, it states the main features that must be supported by MDD tools. In addition, this paper presents an analysis about the presence or absence of these features in a set of industrial MDD tools. 2 RELATED WORK Bran Selic in (Selic, 2003) proposes the following success criteria for the development MDD tools by considering his experience in the development of the IBM Rational Software.

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2018

There is a lack of empirical evidence on the differences between model-driven development (MDD), where code is automatically derived from conceptual models, and traditional software development method, where code is manually written. In our previous work, we compared both methods in a baseline experiment concluding that quality of the software developed following MDD was significantly better only for more complex problems (with more function points). Quality was measured through test cases run on a functional system. Objective: This paper reports six replications of the baseline to study the impact of problem complexity on software quality in the context of MDD. Method: We conducted replications of two types: strict replications and object replications. Strict replications were similar to the baseline, whereas we used more complex experimental objects (problems) in the object replications. Results: MDD yields better quality independently of problem complexity with a moderate effect size. This effect is bigger for problems that are more complex. Conclusions: Thanks to the bigger size of the sample after aggregating replications, we discovered an effect that the baseline had not revealed due to the small sample size. The baseline results hold, which suggests that MDD yields better quality for more complex problems.

Software Quality Journal, 2016

The virtue of quality is not itself a subject; it depends on a subject. In the software engineering field, quality means good software products that meet customer expectations, constraints, and requirements. Despite the numerous approaches, methods, descriptive models and tools, that have been developed, a level of consensus has been reached by software practitioners. However, in the modeldriven engineering (MDE) field, which has emerged from software engineering paradigms, quality continues to be a great challenge since the subject is not fully defined. The use of models alone is not enough to manage all of the quality issues at the modelling language level. In this work, we present the current state and some relevant considerations regarding quality in MDE, by identifying current categories in quality conception and by highlighting quality issues in real applications of the model-driven initiatives. We identified sixteen categories in the definition of quality in MDE. From this identification, by applying an adaptive sampling approach, we discovered the five

2018

Background and Objectives: One of the major challenges in software engineering is how to respond to the desolate state of high-quality software development in a timely and cost-effective manner. Many studies have been conducted in an attempt to formalize the quality of software. However, according to the recent researches, the lack of comprehensive quality model is rooted in neglecting all quality aspects. Methods: In this study, we review nineteen quality models and classify them from three different perspectives, including structural, behavioral, and basic and derived aspects. The main aim is to specify and extract the more comprehensive set of quality factors to evaluate software quality. Results: This paper compares the different quality models and analyzes the factors to draw the necessary aspects in comprehensive quality models. Since the software quality involves several engineering tasks and several players who deal with quality concepts during software life cycle according ...

2012

Modeling is a common practice in modern day software engineering. Since the mid 1990"s the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the de facto standard for modeling software systems. The UML is used in all phases of software developmentranging from the requirements phase to the maintenance phase. However, the manner in which the UML is used differs widely from project to project and from developer to developer. This illustrates an apparent lack of quality awareness in the use of UML. In this paper I will discuss the challenges and opportunities there are for using quality assurance for software modeling for improving the quality and productivity of software development.

Information Systems Development, 2010

Model-driven web engineering (MDWE) is a new paradigm which provides satisfactory results in the development of web software systems. However, as can be concluded from several research works, MDWE provokes traceability problems and the necessity of managing constraints in metamodel instances and transformation executions. The management of these aspects is usually executed manually in the most of MDWE approaches. Nevertheless, model-driven paradigm itself can offer suitable ways to manage them. This chapter presents NDT-Quality, an approach to measure the quality of web projects developed with NDT (navigational development techniques), and offers a view about the application of this tool in real web projects.

Computer Science at Kent, 2004

Nowadays many organizations are adopting MDA to describe their systems. This fact forces organizations to transform their software development process into a Model-Driven Development process. This paper proposes a software development methodology focused on MDA, and describes both the MDD process as well as the main process workflow. The UML Profile SPEM is used to describe the process. In this paper we present a MDD process and a set of System Family Engineer concepts to adapt the MDD process according to user and functional requirements. This methodology has been developed in a European IST project (MASTER project IST-2001-34600) This paper is structured in three main sections; Section 2 provides an overview of the MDD process; Section 3 outlines the adaptative process. Finally section 4 concludes the paper with future research action lines.

2007

Quality is often defined as fitness for purpose which is the key property to determine when evaluating quality. This paper presents some general requirements for evaluating quality frameworks. It also discusses characteristics of MDE that are important when building a quality framework, such as its use of models in several stages of development and maintenance, and its multi-abstraction level approach that requires consistency and traceability. MDE should strive for engineering of quality into software. As a step in extending quality frameworks for this purpose, we discuss integrating quality evaluation with quality engineering using MDE approaches. Applying it on transformations, we discuss both the transformability of models and the quality of transformations themselves. While completeness and precision of models are quality criteria for transformability of them, transformations should monitor and preserve model quality, be reusable, simple and efficient. We further discuss qualit...