Semantic metrics for software products

MILI, ALI; ALI JAOUA; FRIAS, MARCELO FABIAN; RASHA GAFFER MOHAMED HELALI

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering

Springer

Año: 2014 vol. 10 p. 203 - 217

1614-5046

Like all engineering disciplines, software engineering relies on quantitative analysis to support rationalized decision- making. Software engineering researchers and practitioners have traditionally relied on software metrics to quantify attributes of software products and processes. Whereas traditional software metrics are typically based on a syntactic analysis of software products, we introduce and discuss metrics that are based on a semantic analysis: our metrics do not reflect the form or structure of software products, but rather the properties of their function.At a time when software systems grow increasingly large and complex, the obsession with diagnosing, identifying and removing every fault ought to relinquish the stage to a more measured, more balanced, and more realistic approach, which emphasizes failure avoidance, in addition to fault avoidance and fault removal. Semantic metrics come in handy in this context, reflecting as they do a system?s ability to avoid failure rather than its proneness to being faulty.