Functional Size Measurement and Model Verification for Software Model-Driven Developments: A COSMIC-based Approach

Abstract

Historically, software production methods and tools have a unique goal: to produce high quality software. Since the goal of Model-Driven Development (MDD) methods is no different, MDD methods have emerged to take advantage of the benefits of using conceptual models to produce high quality software. In such MDD contexts, conceptual models are used as input to automatically generate final applications. Thus, we advocate that there is a relation between the quality of the final software product and the quality of the models used to generate it. The quality of conceptual models can be influenced by many factors. In this thesis, we focus on the accuracy of the techniques used to predict the characteristics of the development process and the generated products. In terms of the prediction techniques for software development processes, it is widely accepted that knowing the functional size of applications in order to successfully apply effort models and budget models is essential. In order to evaluate the quality of generated applications, defect detection is considered to be the most suitable technique. The research goal of this thesis is to provide an accurate measurement procedure based on COSMIC for the automatic sizing of object-oriented OO-Method MDD applications. To achieve this research goal, it is necessary to accurately measure the conceptual models used in the generation of object-oriented applications. It is also very important for these models not to have defects so that the applications to be measured are correctly represented. In this thesis, we present the OOmCFP (OO-Method COSMIC Function Points) measurement procedure. This procedure makes a twofold contribution: the accurate measurement of objectoriented applications generated in MDD environments from the conceptual models involved, and the verification of conceptual models to allow the complete generation of correct final applications from the conceptual models involved. The OOmCFP procedure has been systematically designed, applied, and automated. This measurement procedure has been validated to conform to the ISO 14143 standard, the metrology concepts defined in the ISO VIM, and the accuracy of the measurements obtained according to ISO 5725. This procedure has also been validated by performing empirical studies. The results of the empirical studies demonstrate that OOmCFP can obtain accurate measures of the functional size of applications generated in MDD environments from the corresponding conceptual models.