Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
measure the size of conceptual models: this helps to better distinguish the size of large
conceptual models.
Currently, there are some approaches that apply COSMIC in order to estimate the
functional size of future software applications from the requirement models, such as
[4]. However, these models do not have enough semantic expressiveness to specify all
the functionality of involved systems. There are other proposals designed to measure
the functional size of conceptual models, which have more functional expressiveness
than requirement models and are used to the automatic generation of final applica-
tions. This is the case of Diab's proposal [7] and Poels' proposal [33]. Diab's pro-
posal presents a measurement procedure to measure real time applications modeled
with the ROOM language [35]. Poels' proposal presents a measurement procedure to
object-oriented applications of the domain of Management Information Systems
(MIS) that are modeled with an event-based method called MERODE [6]. Other FSM
procedures (based on COSMIC) to measure the functional size of conceptual models
can be found in the survey presented in [25].
Summarizing, none of the proposals of measurement procedures based on COS-
MIC allows an accurately measurement of the functional size of MIS applications
from the related conceptual models. Moreover, none of them take into account the
improvements made to the COSMIC measurement method, for instance, the capabil-
ity to measure the functional size of a piece of software of the application depending
on the functionality that needs other piece of software. The main limitation of the
approaches presented above comes from the lack of expressiveness of the conceptual
models that are involved in the generation of the final application, for instance, the
conceptual models do not allow the specification of presentation aspects. For this
reason, we have selected the OO-Method approach as the reference MDD environ-
ment. The OO-Method approach is an object-oriented method that puts the MDA
technology in practice [31], separating the business logic from the platform technol-
ogy, allowing the automatic generation of final applications by means of well-defined
model transformations [32]. It provides the semantic formalization needed to define
complete and unambiguous conceptual models, allowing the specification of all the
functionality of the final application at conceptual level. This method has been im-
plemented in an industrial tool [4] that allows the automatic generation of fully work-
ing applications. The applications generated can be desktop or web MIS applications
and can be generated in several technologies (for instance, java, C#, visual basic,
etc.). In the next section we present a measurement procedure that is based on this
MDD approach.
3 A FSM Procedure for Conceptual Models of an MDD Approach
OOmCFP (OO-Method COSMIC Function Points) [23] is a measurement procedure
that was developed for measuring the functional size of the applications generated by
the OO-Method MDD environment. The OOmCFP procedure measures the functional
size focusing on the conceptual model of the OO-Method MDD approach, which is
comprised of an object model, a functional model, a dynamic model, and a presenta-
tion model.
