Metrics for Ada packages: an initial study

Gannon, John D.; Katz, Elizabeth E.; Basili, Victor R.

doi:10.1145/6138.6144

Cited by 24 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Some of these were: q q q q q q q q q q q q reliance on the predefine numeric types poor definition of numeric types poorly thought out typing in general excessively global type and object deckuations not using constant object declarations for nonstatically valued constants not using type names as discrete ranges, not using the T'RANGE attribute, and not using the in and not in operators not using named parameter and aggregate associations not using boolean assignment statements inappropriate or ineffective attempts to use features such as overloading and generics excessive use clauses use of naming, stylistic, and formatting conventions from other languages, that did not make much sense for Ada imitation of existing pieces of code even when not appropriate A number of these poor language usages were also found in a survey of two million lines of military-reIated applications code Werkins89], so the misuses of Ada itself are probably not peculiar to the small-company environment. The misuses are generally worse than those found in a previous study of experienced programmers in other languages who had been given "typical" Ada formal training [Gannon86].…”

Section: Ziirczncontrasting

confidence: 68%

Use of Ada in a commericial, small company environment

Schilling¹

1993

Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Washington Ada Symposium on Ada Ada's Role in Software Engineering - WADAS '93

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The question of whether and how the Ada language, and its contributions to software engineering principles, will be accepted by the commercial computing world is still open. It is therefore important to study Ada's use for small or medium sized projects in small or medium sized enterprises, and not just for the large sized projects in large sized or non-commercial enterprises that represent most of Ada's current use.This paper describes and analyzes the experiences at one small, commercial software company, where Ada was heavily used by an otherwise experienced programming staff which had neither previous experience with Ada nor formal training in Ada. It was found that, even though the programmers were of above-average quality, and even though some the products they were making were Adarelated, it was not enough to assume that the programmers could effectively learn either the Ada language or the sofhvare engineering principles behind the language. The resulting problems are described, as are severat measures that were taken to solve the problems. Emphasis is given to the cultural and economic characteristics of small, commercial enterprises and how those affected both the problems and their solutions.

show abstract

Section: Ziirczncontrasting

confidence: 68%

Use of Ada in a commericial, small company environment

Schilling¹

1993

Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Washington Ada Symposium on Ada Ada's Role in Software Engineering - WADAS '93

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been shown that system architecture has an impact on maintainability and fault-proneness [26], [24], [38], [30], [39], [16], [40], [41], [43], [1], [17], [2], [44]. These studies have attempted to capture the design attributes affecting the ease of maintaining and debugging a software system.…”

Section: Define and Validate A Set Of High-level Design Measures To Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Defining and validating measures for object-based high-level design

Briand

Morasca

Basili

1999

IIEEE Trans. Software Eng.

153

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract-The availability of significant measures in the early phases of the software development life-cycle allows for better management of the later phases, and more effective quality assessment when quality can be more easily affected by preventive or corrective actions. In this paper, we introduce and compare various high-level design measures for object-based software systems. The measures are derived based on an experimental goal, identifying fault-prone software parts, and several experimental hypotheses arising from the development of Ada systems for Flight Dynamics Software at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC). Specifically, we define a set of measures for cohesion and coupling, which satisfy a previously published set of mathematical properties that are necessary for any such measures to be valid. We then investigate the measures' relationship to fault-proneness on three large scale projects, to provide empirical support for their practical significance and usefulness.

show abstract

“…For example, if a stack is implemented as an open array, individual components can be read or written, by-passing any Pop or Push operations that might be provided. This category is worse than Common coupling 6…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Problems with determining package cohesion and coupling

Rising

Calliss

1992

Softw Pract Exp

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The cohesion and coupling guidelines described by Yourdon, Constantine and Myers have proved useful aids for the design of modular programs. They have also provided direction for the evaluation of existing modules, pointing to those candidates for restructuring during perfective maintenance. For languages like Ada, where support for a higher-level of abstraction is provided in the form of a package, subprogram heuristics are inadequate. This paper examines existing guidelines and taxonomies for the Ada package and proposes extensions to these schemes. These package-level schemes are applied in a case study of an existing Ada program.

show abstract

Metrics for Ada packages: an initial study

Abstract: Many novel features of Ada present programmers with a formidable learning task. The study of four first-time Ada programmers suggests that a background in the software engineering practices supported by Ada is necessary to learn to use the features of the language.

Cited by 24 publications

References 7 publications

Use of Ada in a commericial, small company environment

Use of Ada in a commericial, small company environment

Defining and validating measures for object-based high-level design

Problems with determining package cohesion and coupling

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About