Several software quality metrics have been proposed during the last decades to reduce risks and f... more Several software quality metrics have been proposed during the last decades to reduce risks and faultiness during software development. Despite these many efforts, most defined measurements fail to reach a satisfactory level of performance due to the ambiguities detected in the way their definitions are expressed and later on interpreted. The paper introduces a formal extension of a well-known library of measures named FLAME. While this library is expressed using the semi-formal language OCL (Object Constraint Language) upon the UML meta-model, our extension make use of formal methods to provide a more precise and accurate measurements by proposing a formal definitions of software metrics upon a formal expression of the UML metamodel. Unlike the original definition of the library, this extension supports formal proofs and guarantees a unique interpretation which allows the built of tools support.
Software design metrics, since their apparition, suffer from a lack of formalism in their definit... more Software design metrics, since their apparition, suffer from a lack of formalism in their definition opening room to ambiguities and thus to misleading results. Although, several studies attempted to bring rigor to most well-known suite of metrics, the degree of formalism used to define them, constitutes a significant obstacle towards the built of solid tools support, considered as the key point to an easy integration of measurement in the industry. This paper is a logical continuation of a previous published work where a Zbased formalization of the CK metrics is presented, offering an innovative and easy to follow methodology which successfully manages to provide a solid definition of metrics that deals with complexity, coupling and cohesion. While this work brings formalism at the classifier level, we proceed, in the present, to propose formalism for an overall quality measurement of the object-oriented systems, introducing the invisibility concept formalization and extending the quality indicator properties to encapsulation and polymorphism.
The ability of UML to handle the modeling process of complex industrial software applications has... more The ability of UML to handle the modeling process of complex industrial software applications has increased its popularity to the extent of becoming the de-facto language in serving the design purpose. Although, its rich graphical notation naturally oriented towards the object-oriented concept, facilitates the understandability, it hardly successes to report all domainspecific aspects in a satisfactory way. OCL, as the standard language for expressing additional constraints on UML models, has great potential to help improve expressiveness. Unfortunately, it suffers from a weak formalism due to its poor semantic resulting in many obstacles towards the build of tools support and thus its application in the industry field. For this reason, many researches were established to formalize OCL expressions using a more rigorous approach. Our contribution join this work in a complementary way since it focuses specifically on OCL predefined properties which constitute an important part in the construction of OCL expressions. Using formal methods, we mainly succeed in expressing rigorously OCL predefined functions. metamodel types.
Given the significant interest in applying formal methods to object oriented paradigms, this pape... more Given the significant interest in applying formal methods to object oriented paradigms, this paper presents a formal approach to define software design quality metrics upon a formal specification of the UML metamodel using the Z language. This multi-level formalization benefits greatly to design metrics as it allows a non ambiguous interpretation and a more rigorous definition, which, in turn, can assist the implementation of tools to measure the software design quality for industrial application. Our achievement gives precise meaning to software design metrics definitions in order to facilitate verification and validation. We, especially, applied our approach to one of the most well known set of metrics: the CK metrics.
Several software quality metrics have been proposed during the last decades to reduce risks and f... more Several software quality metrics have been proposed during the last decades to reduce risks and faultiness during software development. Despite these many efforts, most defined measurements fail to reach a satisfactory level of performance due to the ambiguities detected in the way their definitions are expressed and later on interpreted. The paper introduces a formal extension of a well-known library of measures named FLAME. While this library is expressed using the semi-formal language OCL (Object Constraint Language) upon the UML meta-model, our extension make use of formal methods to provide a more precise and accurate measurements by proposing a formal definitions of software metrics upon a formal expression of the UML metamodel. Unlike the original definition of the library, this extension supports formal proofs and guarantees a unique interpretation which allows the built of tools support.
Software design metrics, since their apparition, suffer from a lack of formalism in their definit... more Software design metrics, since their apparition, suffer from a lack of formalism in their definition opening room to ambiguities and thus to misleading results. Although, several studies attempted to bring rigor to most well-known suite of metrics, the degree of formalism used to define them, constitutes a significant obstacle towards the built of solid tools support, considered as the key point to an easy integration of measurement in the industry. This paper is a logical continuation of a previous published work where a Zbased formalization of the CK metrics is presented, offering an innovative and easy to follow methodology which successfully manages to provide a solid definition of metrics that deals with complexity, coupling and cohesion. While this work brings formalism at the classifier level, we proceed, in the present, to propose formalism for an overall quality measurement of the object-oriented systems, introducing the invisibility concept formalization and extending the quality indicator properties to encapsulation and polymorphism.
The ability of UML to handle the modeling process of complex industrial software applications has... more The ability of UML to handle the modeling process of complex industrial software applications has increased its popularity to the extent of becoming the de-facto language in serving the design purpose. Although, its rich graphical notation naturally oriented towards the object-oriented concept, facilitates the understandability, it hardly successes to report all domainspecific aspects in a satisfactory way. OCL, as the standard language for expressing additional constraints on UML models, has great potential to help improve expressiveness. Unfortunately, it suffers from a weak formalism due to its poor semantic resulting in many obstacles towards the build of tools support and thus its application in the industry field. For this reason, many researches were established to formalize OCL expressions using a more rigorous approach. Our contribution join this work in a complementary way since it focuses specifically on OCL predefined properties which constitute an important part in the construction of OCL expressions. Using formal methods, we mainly succeed in expressing rigorously OCL predefined functions. metamodel types.
Given the significant interest in applying formal methods to object oriented paradigms, this pape... more Given the significant interest in applying formal methods to object oriented paradigms, this paper presents a formal approach to define software design quality metrics upon a formal specification of the UML metamodel using the Z language. This multi-level formalization benefits greatly to design metrics as it allows a non ambiguous interpretation and a more rigorous definition, which, in turn, can assist the implementation of tools to measure the software design quality for industrial application. Our achievement gives precise meaning to software design metrics definitions in order to facilitate verification and validation. We, especially, applied our approach to one of the most well known set of metrics: the CK metrics.
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Papers by Meryem Lamrani