RTTool: A Tool for Extracting Relative Thresholds for Source Code Metrics

Oliveira, Paloma; Lima, Fernando Paim; Valente, Marco; Serebrenik, Alexander

doi:10.1109/icsme.2014.112

Cited by 28 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…From the observation that source code metrics may follow heavy-tailed distributions, researchers have recently proposed techniques for extracting reliable thresholds for existing metrics [1,9,23,24]. In this paper, we used the techniques of Oliveira et al [23,24] for extracting reliable thresholds for the metrics we evaluated.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

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The shape of feature code: an analysis of twenty C-preprocessor-based systems

et al. 2015

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Feature annotations (e.g., code fragments guarded by #ifdef C-preprocessor directives) control code extensions related to features. Feature annotations have long been said to be undesirable. When maintaining features that control many annotations, there is a high risk of ripple effects. Also, excessive use of feature annotations leads to code clutter, hinder program comprehension and harden maintenance.To prevent such problems, developers should monitor the use of feature annotations, for example, by setting acceptable thresholds. Interestingly, little is known about how to extract thresholds in practice, and which values are representative for feature-related metrics. To address this issue, we analyze the statistical distribution of three feature-related metrics collected from a corpus of 20 well-known and longlived C-preprocessor-based systems from different domains. We consider three metrics: scattering degree of feature conCommunicated by Prof. stants, tangling degree of feature expressions, and nesting depth of preprocessor annotations. Our findings show that feature scattering is highly skewed; in 14 systems (70 %), the scattering distributions match a power law, making averages and standard deviations unreliable limits. Regarding tangling and nesting, the values tend to follow a uniform distribution; although outliers exist, they have little impact on the mean, suggesting that central statistics measures are reliable thresholds for tangling and nesting. Following our findings, we then propose thresholds from our benchmark data, as a basis for further investigations.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In this paper, we used the techniques of Oliveira et al [23,24] for extracting reliable thresholds for the metrics we evaluated.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The shape of feature code: an analysis of twenty C-preprocessor-based systems

et al. 2015

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…provide a complementary perspective on the earlier results obtained through controlled experiments (Correa et al 2007;Reynoso et al 2006); 2. replicate corpus-based studies conducted in the context of traditional software engineering, in a MDE context; Our dataset (Noten et al 2017b) will also allow companies specializing in software quality to benchmark OCL expressions from systems under investigation against a larger collection of OCL expressions, and thus derive conclusions about the system quality (cf. similar work for non-MDE software Heitlager et al 2007;Oliveira et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Empowering OCL research: a large-scale corpus of open-source data from GitHub

2018

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Model-driven engineering (MDE) enables the rise in abstraction during development in software and system design. In particular, meta-models become a central artifact in the process, and are supported by various other artifacts such as editors and transformation. In order to define constraints, invariants, and queries on model-driven artifacts, a generic language has been developed: the Object Constraint Language (OCL). In literature, many studies into OCL have been performed on small collections of data, mostly originating from a single source (e.g., OMG standards). As such, generalization of results beyond the data studied is often mentioned as a threat to validity. Creation of a benchmark dataset has already been identified as a key enabler to address the generalization threat. To facilitate further empirical studies in the field of OCL, we present the first large-scale dataset of 103262 OCL expression, systematically extracted from 671 GitHub repositories. In particular, our dataset has extracted these expressions from various types of files (a.o. metamodels and model-to-text transformations). In this work we showcase a variety of different studies performed using our dataset, and describe several other types that could be performed. We extend previous work with data and experiments regarding OCL in model-to-text (mtl) transformations.

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“…In the works of Oliveira et al [15,14], the concept of relative thresholds is proposed as well as a tool for extracting these thresholds. Their approach handles the heavy-tailored distribution of source code metrics by complementing absolute thresholds with a percentage of software code entities that must follow it.…”

Section: Thresholds Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the literature, few metrics have defined thresholds. Furthermore, many researchers have proposed different approaches to define them [3,4,6,14,15,9,16,8,10].…”

Section: Thresholds Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical study on the influence of context in computing thresholds for Chidamber and Kemerer metrics

Santos¹,

Saraiva

Perkusich

et al. 2017

International Conferences on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering

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Software metrics have a fundamental role in the process of software quality management. However, in most cases, they are only used to quantify attributes, not supporting decision-making during the software life cycle. To support decision-making, it is necessary to give them by defining thresholds. In the literature, several approaches have been proposed with this purpose. On the other hand, most of them do not consider context factors such as the domain. Given this, in this paper, we evaluate if context factors influence the definition of thresholds for software metrics. Our work is restricted to Chidamber and Kemerer metrics, due to availability of data. We conducted an empirical study composed of two quasi-experiments. Each quasi-experiment uses an approach presented in the literature to define thresholds for software metrics, with the defined thresholds as the dependent variable. As the factor, we used a variable with two possible treatments: to consider the context or not. To define context, we used factors presented in the literature. As the objects of study, we used the source code of fifteen Java-based open-source projects. For measurement purposes, we used the six original Chidamber and Kemerer metrics. For both quasi-experiments, the accuracy of the definition of thresholds improved by considering the context. Therefore, we concluded that context factors influence the definition of the threshold for Chidamber and Kemerer metrics, which is an indicator that it influences other software metrics.

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RTTool: A Tool for Extracting Relative Thresholds for Source Code Metrics

Cited by 28 publications

References 20 publications

The shape of feature code: an analysis of twenty C-preprocessor-based systems

The shape of feature code: an analysis of twenty C-preprocessor-based systems

Empowering OCL research: a large-scale corpus of open-source data from GitHub

An empirical study on the influence of context in computing thresholds for Chidamber and Kemerer metrics

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