Estimation of quality for software components: an empirical approach

ABSTRACT

Component-Based Development (CBD) approach now is widely accepted in software industry. This approach enables efficient application development through the integration of already developed software components. The success of these applications heavily depends upon the selection of appropriate components to fit customer requirements. Therefore it is very necessary to evaluate the quality of components before using them in the final system. Quality models proposed so far can not be fully implemented as-it-is on components and component-based systems (CBS) due to architectural differences in the development approach. Present paper surveys a number of quality models for traditional and component-based systems and proposes a new model for CBS by proposing some new characteristics, which may be very relevant in the context of components. All the quality characteristics may not be of prime importance for an application to be developed for a specific domain. Therefore, it is necessary to identify only those characteristics/sub-characteristics, which may have higher priorities over the others. The present work uses Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assign the weight values to the characteristics for the proposed model. These weight values are then used to evaluate the quality contribution of sub-characteristics, characteristics and then finally the overall quality of the component by using the appropriate metrics. This approach can be used to identify and select better quality component among several others which can be used in the final system.

REFERENCES

• 1: IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, IEEE Std 610.12-1990.
• 2: Khosravi, K., Gueheneuc, Y.G., "A Quality Model for Design Patterns", 2004, Online at: http://www.yanngael.gueheneuc.net/Work/~Tutoring/Documents/041021+Kashayar+Khosravi+Technical+Report.doc.pdf.
• 3: ISO 9126, "Information Technology -- Product Quality - Part1: Quality Model", International Standard ISO/IEC 9126, International Standard Organization, June, 2001.
• 4: Losavio, Francisca, Chirinos, Ledis, Pérez, Maria A., "Quality Models to Design Software Architecture", Journal of Object Technology, Vol. 1, Iss. 4, 2002.
• 5: McCall, J.A., Richards, P.K., & Walters, G.F., "Factors in Software Quality", Griffiths Air Force Base, N.Y. Rome Air Development Center Air Force Systems Command, 1977.
• 6: Cote, M., A. Suryn, W. Georgiadou, E, "Software Quality Model Requirements for Software Quality Engineering", 14th International Conference on Software Quality Management, 2006, 31--50.
• 7: B. W. Boehm , J. R. Brown , M. Lipow, Quantitative evaluation of software quality, Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Software engineering, p.592-605, October 13-15, 1976, San Francisco, California, United States
• 8: Maryoly, O., M.A. Perez and T. Rojas, "A Systemic Quality Model For Evaluating Software Products" 2002, available at http://www.lisi.usb.ve/publicaciones.
• 9: R. Geoff Dromey, A Model for Software Product Quality, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.21 n.2, p.146-162, February 1995 [doi>10.1109/32.345830]
• 10: Adnan Rawashdeh, Bassem Matalkah, "A New Software Quality Model for Evaluating COTS Components", Journal of Computer Science, 2006, Vol. 2 Iss. 4, 373--381.
• 11: I. Crnkovic, M. Larsson, and O. Preiss, "Concerning Predictability in Dependable Component-Based Systems", Classification of Quality Attributes, Architecting Dependable Systems III, 257--278, LNCS 3549, 2005.
• 12: Mario Piattini , Fernando Brito e Abreu , Geert Poels , Houari A. Sahraoui, Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering, Proceedings of the Workshops and Posters on Object-Oriented Technology, p.147-153, June 10-14, 2002
• 13: Preiss, O., Weqmann, A., Wong, J, "On Quality Attribute Based Software Engineering", Proceeding of 27th EuroMicro Conference, 2001, 114--121.
• 14: Sahra Sedigh-Ali , Arif Ghafoor , Raymond A. Paul, Software Engineering Metrics for COTS-Based Systems, Computer, v.34 n.5, p.44-50, May 2001 [doi>10.1109/2.920611]
• 15: Bertoa, M. and Vallecillo, A. "Usability metrics for software components". Proceedings of Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering QAOOSE 2004, Oslo.
• 16: Jon Arvid Borretzen, "The Impact of Component Based Development on Software Quality Attributes", available at http://www.idi.ntnu.no/emner/dt8100/Essay2005/Boerretzen.pdf
• 17: Alexandre Alvaro, duardo Santana de Almeida, Silvio Romero de Lemos Meira, "Quality Attributes for a Component Quality Model", Proceeding of 10th International Workshop on Component Oriented Programming (WCOP), Glasgow, Scotland, 2005.
• 18: Sharma Arun, Kumar Rajesh, Grover, P.S., "Empirical Evaluation of Complexity Metric for Software Components", International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Vol. 19, Iss. 5, to be published in Aug. 2009.
• 19: Mark Vigder , Anatol W. Kark, Maintaining COTS-Based Systems: Start with the Design, Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS)-Based Software Systems, p.11, February 13-16, 2006 [doi>10.1109/ICCBSS.2006.19]
• 20: P. S. Grover , Rajesh Kumar , Arun Sharma, Few useful considerations for maintaining software components and component-based systems, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.32 n.5, September 2007 [doi>10.1145/1290993.1290995]
• 21: Jeffrey Voas , William W. Agresti, Software Quality from a Behavioral Perspective, IT Professional, v.6 n.4, p.46-50, July 2004 [doi>10.1109/MITP.2004.45]
• 22: Jayaswal, B.K., Patton, Peter, C., Forman, Ernest, H., "The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in Software Development", Prentice Hall, 2007.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management
          Subjects: Software quality assurance (SQA)

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.4 System Management
          Subjects: Quality assurance

Keywords:
AHP, ISO9126, components, quality, quality model