Measuring OO design metrics from UML

Abstract

Design metrics are useful means for improving the quality of software. A number of object-oriented metrics have been suggested as being helpful for resource allocation in software development. These metrics are particularly useful for identifying fault-prone classes and for predicting required maintenance efforts, productivity, and rework efforts. To obtain the design metrics of the software under development, most existing approaches measure the metrics by parsing the source code of the software. Such approaches can only be performed in a late phase of software development, thus limiting the usefulness of the design metrics in resource allocation. In this paper, we present a methodology that compiles UML specifications to obtain design information and to compute the design metrics at an early stage of software development. The current version of our tool uses diagrams produced by the Rational Rose tool and computes OO metrics that have been suggested as being good indicators for identifying faults related to Object-Oriented features. Our technique advances the state of the metrics measuring process; thus it is expected to strongly promote the use of design metrics and significantly increase their impact on improving software quality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.