Information Technology Reference
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software reliability remains a difficult problem because we do not have a good
understanding of the nature of software. There is no clear definition to what aspects
are related to software reliability. We cannot find a suitable way to measure software
reliability and most of the aspects related to software reliability. Even the most
obvious product metrics such as software size have no uniform definition. The next
good thing is to measure something related to reliability to reflect the characteristics
if we cannot measure reliability directly.
Software reliability metrics can be categorized as static code and dynamic metrics
as follows:
A. Static Code Metrics : Software size is thought to be reflective of complexity,
development effort, and reliability. Lines of code (LOC), or LOC in thou-
sands (KLOC), is an intuitive initial approach to measure software size. But
there is no standard way of counting. Typically, source code is used (SLOC,
KSLOC), and comments and other nonexecutable statements are not counted.
This method cannot faithfully compare software not written in the same lan-
guage. The advent of new technologies of code reuses and code generation
techniques also cast doubt on this simple method. Test coverage metrics are
estimate fault and reliability by performing tests on software products based on
the assumption that software reliability is a function of the portion of software
that successfully has been verified or tested.
The static code metric is divided into three categories with measurements
under each: Line count, complexity and structure, and object-oriented metrics.
Line count:
Lines of code
Source Lines of code
Complexity and structure: Complexity is related directly to software relia-
bility, so representing complexity is important. Complexity-oriented metrics
is a method of determining the complexity of a program's control structure
by simplifying the code into a graphical representation.
Cyclomatic complexity
Number of modules
Number of go-to statements
Object-oriented: Object-oriented functional point metrics is a method of
measuring the functionality of a proposed software development based on a
count of inputs, outputs, master files, inquires, and interfaces. The method
can be used to estimate the size of a software system as soon as these
functions can be identified. It is a measure of the functional complexity
of the program. It measures the functionality delivered to the user and is
independent of the programming language. It is used primarily for business
systems; it is not proven in scientific or real-time applications.
Number of classes
Weighted methods per class
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