Empirical evaluation of non functional properties of software ecosystems

Abstract

Software systems are interconnecting software components which form a part of a computer system Every system is modeled by considering two important aspects structure and behaviour A large and intricate software system can be described structurally with the help of its architecture and also the structural aspects of its individual components Structural characteristics play a significant role in evaluating the reusability of software systems This research addresses issues related to the structure of software systems such as organization of the system in terms of the components and their relationships which are static models Louis Pasteur has stated that science is as mature as its measurement tools Producing high quality software is a prerequisite for satisfying the requirements of any software To accomplish this more research is needed in defining and measuring software quality as well as a way to derive metrics for quantifying software Metrics are quantitative measures of the software attributes related to the quality factors The factors affecting software quality are categorized in terms of three software product activities namely product operation product revision and product transition Mc Call et al 1977b The software quality attributes considered in this research are maintainability in the product revision phase and reusability in the product transition phase Maintainability is the effort needed to find and troubleshoot an error in an operational program while reusability is the effort required to use software in a different application newline