Measuring Models

Measuring Models

Martin Monperrus, Jean-Marc Jézéquel, Joël Champeau, Brigitte Hoeltzener
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-006-6.ch007
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Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is an approach to software development that uses models as primary artifacts, from which code, documentation and tests are derived. One way of assessing quality assurance in a given domain is to define domain metrics. We show that some of these metrics are supported by models. As text documents, models can be considered from a syntactic point of view i.e., thought of as graphs. We can readily apply graph-based metrics to them, such as the number of nodes, the number of edges or the fan-in/fan-out distributions. However, these metrics cannot leverage the semantic structuring enforced by each specific metamodel to give domain specific information. Contrary to graph-based metrics, more specific metrics do exist for given domains (such as LOC for programs), but they lack genericity. Our contribution is to propose one metric, called s, that is generic over metamodels and allows the easy specification of an open-ended wide range of model metrics.
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State Of The Art

Dedicated Model Measurement

Metamodel Measurement

Ma et al. [Ma et al., 2004] compare different versions of the UML metamodel using OO metrics defined in [Bansiya and Davis, 2002]. Ma et al. [Ma et al., 2005] define patterns linked to the lifecycle of metaclasses, and study them on different versions of the UML metamodel. This work is similar in spirit to those made at the OO level [Mattsson and Bosch, 1999, Bansiya, 2000, Gî rba et al., 2005].

MDE Processes Measurement

Berenbach et al. [Berenbach and Borotto, 2006] list a number of metrics for model driven requirements development and enounce some good practices. The Modelware project delivered three documents [Modelware Project, 2006a, Modelware Project, 2006b, Modelware Project, 2006c] in which several metrics about MDE processes are defined.

UML Models Measurement

Previous works about the measurement of UML models follows the same decomposition as the UML artifacts themselves. Some authors address the measurement of class diagrams (see [Genero et al., 2005] for a survey), others the measurement of dynamic models [Genero et al., 2002, Baroni, 2005], component models (e.g., [Mahmood and Lai, 2005]), and OCL expressions [Cabot and Teniente, 2006, Reynoso et al., 2003].

Synthesis

These works are dedicated to particular MDE artifacts, i.e., metamodels, processes, UML models. They do not note that all this artifacts are models too, w.r.t. a metametamodel, a process metamodel or the UML metamodel. These contributions do not leverage this idea for defining a generic metric usable at any moment of product life-cycle, from requirements to implementation.

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