A New Framework for software Library Investment Metrics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new model with three metrics to quantify the effort saved by using libraries over generic programming, aiming to better measure software quality and productivity.

Contribution

It proposes a novel effort-based model with three metrics for evaluating library investment impact on software quality and productivity, validated through empirical analysis.

Findings

The model outperforms Reuse Percent in indicating software quality improvements.

Empirical analysis on ten projects demonstrates the model's effectiveness.

The model provides a better measure of effort savings and quality enhancement.

Abstract

Software quality is considered as one of the most important challenges in software engineering. It has many dimensions which differ from users' point of view that depend on their requirements. Therefore, those dimensions lead to difficulty in measuring and defining the software quality properly. Software quality measurement is the main core of the software quality. Thus, it is necessary to study and develop the software measurements to meet the better quality. The use of libraries increases software quality more than that of using generic programming because these libraries are prepared and tested in advance. In addition, these libraries reduce the effort that is spent in designing, testing, and maintenance processes. In this research, we presented a new model to calculate the saved effort that results from using libraries instead of generic programming in the coding, testing, and productivity processes. The proposed model consists of three metrics that are Library Investment Ratio, Library Investment Level, and Program Simplicity. An empirical analyzes has been applied into ten projects to compare the results of the model with Reuse Percent. The results show that the model has better indication of the improvement of software quality and productivity rather than Reuse Percent.