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Metric analysis and data validation across FORTRAN projectsThe desire to predict the effort in developing or explaining the quality of software has led to the proposal of several metrics. As a step toward validating these metrics, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) has analyzed the software science metrics, cyclomatic complexity, and various standard program measures for their relation to effort (including design through acceptance testing), development errors (both discrete and weighted according to the amount of time to locate and fix), and one another. The data investigated are collected from a project FORTRAN environment and examined across several projects at once, within individual projects and by reporting accuracy checks demonstrating the need to validate a database. When the data comes from individual programmers or certain validated projects, the metrics' correlations with actual effort seem to be strongest. For modules developed entirely by individual programmers, the validity ratios induce a statistically significant ordering of several of the metrics' correlations. When comparing the strongest correlations, neither software science's E metric cyclomatic complexity not source lines of code appears to relate convincingly better with effort than the others.
Document ID
19870015467
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Other
Authors
Basili, Victor R.
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Selby, Richard W., Jr.
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Phillips, Tsai-Yun
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
September 5, 2013
Publication Date
November 1, 1983
Publication Information
Publication: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Collected Software Engineering Papers, Volume 2
Subject Category
Computer Programming And Software
Report/Patent Number
TR-1228
Report Number: TR-1228
Accession Number
87N24900
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: F49620-80-C-001
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSG5-123
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
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