http://www.lcc.uma.es/~av/Publicaciones/05/JSS-Usability.pdf

Measuring the usability of software components

Context: Component identification, the process of evolving legacy system into finely organized component-based software systems, is a critical part of software reengineering. Currently, many component identification approaches have been developed based on agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms. However, there is a lack of thorough investigation on which algorithm is appropriate for component identification. Objective: This paper focuses on analyzing agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms in software reengineering, and then identifying their respective strengths and weaknesses in order to apply them effectively for future practical applications. Method: A series of experiments were conducted for 18 clustering strategies combined according to various similarity measures, weighting schemes and linkage methods. Eleven subject systems with different application domains and source code sizes were used in the experiments. The component identification results are evaluated by the proposed size, coupling and cohesion criteria. Results: The experimental results suggested that the employed similarity measures, weighting schemes and linkage methods can have various effects on component identification results with respect to the proposed size, coupling and cohesion criteria, so the hierarchical clustering algorithms produced quite different clustering results. Conclusions: According to the experimental results, it can be concluded that it is difficult to produce perfectly satisfactory results for a given clustering algorithm. Nevertheless, these algorithms demonstrated varied capabilities to identify components with respect to the proposed size, coupling and cohesion criteria.

Applying agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithms to component identification for legacy systems

Software reuse has been used as a tool to reduce the development cost and time of the software. Nowadays, in fact, majority of software systems are being developed from an assembly of existing reusable components. In order to assess the reuse of components effectively, it is necessary to measure the reusability of these components. Paper proposes Artificial Neural Network based approach to assess the reusability of software component. This work will help developers to select the best component in terms of its reusability, which will improve the maintainability of the overall system.

Reusability assessment for software components

Some theoretical considerations for a suite of metrics for the integration of software components

The grouping of correlated classes into a package helps in better organization of modern object-oriented software. The quality of such packages needs to be measured so as to estimate their utilization. In this paper, new package coupling metrics are proposed, which also take into consideration the hierarchical structure of packages and direction of connections among package elements. The proposed measures have been validated theoretically as well as empirically using 18 packages taken from two open source software systems. The results obtained from this study show strong correlation between package coupling and understandability of the package which suggests that proposed metrics could be further used to represent other external software quality factors.

Package coupling measurement in object-oriented software

In component-based software development, it is necessary to measure the reusability of components in order to realize the reuse of components effectively. There are some product metrics for measuring the reusability of object-oriented software. However, in application development with reuse, it is difficult to use conventional metrics because the source codes of components cannot be obtained, and these metrics require analysis of source codes. We propose a metrics suite for measuring the reusability of such black-box components based on limited information that can be obtained from the outside of components without any source codes. We define five metrics for measuring a component's understandability, adaptability, and portability, with confidence intervals that were set by statistical analysis of a number of JavaBeans components. Moreover, we provide a reusability metric by combining these metrics based on a reusability model. As a result of evaluation experiments, it is found that our metrics can effectively identify black-box components with high reusability.

/pdf/a-metrics-suite-for-measuring-reusability-of-software-txkxi8f71m.pdf

A metrics suite for measuring reusability of software components

There is provided a real time processing software control method capable of relatively describing priority of state according to the necessity of the real time processing of each state and performing design of the state transition and task priority considering the real time in the upstream design step before detailed real time is made clear. For each of states ([1]311) to ([6]316) of the controllable device, there are set real time flags (F1) to (F6) indicating whether the processing in the state requires real time processing and priority levels (P1) to (P6) decided by the state immediately before and the current state. According to the real time flag and the priority level, a task priority management unit (104) changes the task priority as the controllable device changes its state.

Realtime Processing Software Control Device and Method

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a controller and a control method for real-time processing software, allowing relative description of priority of a state by necessity of real-time processing of each state, and allowing a design of task priority and state transition in consideration of a real-time property in an upstream design process before detailed execution time becomes clear. SOLUTION: About each of a state [1] 311 to a state [6] 316 capable of being taken by control target equipment, a real-time property flag F1 to F6 showing whether a process in the state requires the real-time processing or not, and a priority level P1 to P6 determined by the preceding state and the present state are set. A task priority management part 104 changes the priority of a task on the basis of the real time property flag and the priority level, according to the state transition of the control target equipment. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Real-time processing software controller and method

A device control apparatus has a state processing task section 101 for determining an operation state of a device among a plurality of operation states of the device; a sequence processing task section 107 for running a processing program among a plurality of processing programs, and a task connecting section 111 for selecting the sequence processing program corresponding to the operation state of the device determined by the state processing task section to activate the sequence processing task section 107 . In this arrangement, the sequence processing program can be easily written without considering an internal state transition processing, and the internal state transition processing and the sequence processing program can be freely designed without the need of modifying the sequence processing program due to change of the internal state transition processing.

Device control apparatus, device control method, and computer-readable recording medium recorded with device control program

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To continuously reproduce video data recorded over a plurality of recording media by integrating recording/reproducing processing depending on each of a plurality of recording media into recording/reproducing processing to a single virtual recording medium in a recording/reproducing device corresponding to the plurality of recording media. SOLUTION: The recording/reproducing device comprises a recording/reproducing control section 101 for allocating a virtual address to each sector by dividing video data into sector units; and a sector list conversion section 104 for creating a mapping table 105 for associating a virtual address allocated to each sector with an actual address on the recording medium corresponding to each sector. The actual address of the recording medium on which data in each sector are recorded is managed by the virtual address allocated to each sector. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Hirokazu Yamamoto

Papers

A metrics suite for measuring reusability of software components

Realtime Processing Software Control Device and Method

Real-time processing software controller and method

Device control apparatus, device control method, and computer-readable recording medium recorded with device control program

Recording/reproducing device