Software Metrics Analyzer
The basic task of software metrics (source code metrics) is to identify and measure the key parameters which affect software development. DA-C offers a solution which combines the usefulness of using software metrics and the facility of working in an integrated environment. Metrics reports provide from their own angle a qualitatively new outlook on the complexity and quality of the project. Software metrics in DA-C are easy to use, allow a visual overview of metrics parameters and are integrated into the project.
The large number of different software metrics can be classified in the following manner:
Product metrics evaluate the software product in any one stage of its development. They can, for instance, measure the complexity of the design, the size of the source or the object code, or the amount of documentation generated.
Process metrics are related to the very process of software production and serve to estimate the time or effort needed to realize the software, average efficiency of human resources, and so on.
It is possible to distinguish between two types of product metrics:
1. Metrics which determine the size of the program code:
The number of lines of code and the number of statements,
Function Points (FP),
The number of functions or modules in the program,
2. Metrics which determine the logical complexity of the program,
The number of binary decisions,
Cyclomatic Complexity,
Logical depth of statement,
Halstead Parameters (Vocabulary, Length, Volume),
Operator density in the code,
The number of local or global variables used in the code.
Certain Halstead Parameters, Effort and Programming Time among them, belong with Process metrics.
In DA-C, metrics parameters are also classified according to as they are scalar (for example, the number of comment lines in a single function) or vectorial (for example, the number of comment lines in a single module gives a series of values - one for each function). The type of metrics report in which a parameter may appear depends on the type of the parameter in question. Some types of report relate exclusively to vectorial parameters. In reports which use scalar values, mean values of vectorial parameters may also be used. The following sections define the types of metrics parameters generally speaking, and the way in which they are determined from the program code.