ECOOP / Tutorial 19

UML Design Metrics: Formalizing and Automating Collection with OCL

Topic	Software metrics, object-oriented software engineering, experimental software engineering
Goal	Present a novel approach, both formal and pragmatic, to evaluate the complexity of UML designs
Style	Concepts, exercises and demonstration

Abstract

In this tutorial we will present an approach that solves the metrics ill-definition problem. The UML meta-model is used as context and OCL operations defined on it are used in a compositional fashion to express design metrics.
The metrics applicability limitations are defined with OCL pre-conditions. The metrics result itself is formally defined with OCL post-conditions.
The outcome is an elegant, precise and straightforward way to define metrics that may help to overcome several current problems. Besides, it is a natural approach since we are using object technology to define metrics on object technology itself.
To illustrate this approach, we will present several examples taken from well-known metric sets. A demonstration of the validation of a design metrics set using this approach will be performed. A library of basic OCL functions for composition of OO metrics will be made available to all tutorial participants. Automation of metrics collection will be shown using this approach.

The tutorial schedule will be the following:

Motivation and Introduction
UML Meta-Model
OCL Syntax and Semantics
Expressing metrics with OCL
Case study
Demonstration
Conclusions and explanation of delivery package

Presenter Profile

Fernando Brito e Abreu

Fernando Brito e Abreu holds a PhD on Computer Science and a MSc on Telecommunications and Computer Engineering, both from the Lisbon Technical University (http://www.ist.utl.pt).

He is currently professor of object-oriented design and programming at the Lisbon New University (http://di.fct.unl.pt) and integrates the international team of professors that deliver the EMOOSE – European Master on Object Orientation and Software Engineering, created in the scope of the European Commission ALFA Program (http://www.emn.fr/emoose).
He leads a research team on QUantitative Approaches on Software Engineering And Reengineering (http://ctp.di.fct.unl.pt/QUASAR).
He is author or co-author of around 40 communications on workshops, conferences and symposiums and of more than 20 papers on scientific and technical journals.
He has participated in the organization of around 20 conferences worldwide, as program committee member, panel member, session chairman, steering committee member and organizing committee member, including general chair. He has also promoted a series of workshops such as the ECOOP’s QAOOSE – Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering (http://www.ecoop.tu-darmstadt.de/workshops/10.phtml).
He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Software Quality Professional journal (http://sqp.asq.org), published by the American Society for Quality (http://www.asq.org/), and a reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (http://www.computer.org/tse/).
He is the author of the MOOD and MOOD2 (Metrics for Object Oriented Design) and he first proposed the meta-level formalization of metrics using OCL, a formal language that is part of the UML standard.
He has taught tutorials on object oriented design, software metrics, software quality and software engineering project management on several international conferences.

Details

Attendees are expected to have a fair background knowledge of object-oriented design notions with UML and general software engineering knowledge, including some expose to software metrics. This tutorial is an evolution of the one presented at ECOOP'2002 held in Malaga last June (http://www.ecoop2002.lcc.uma.es/)

Presenter(s)	Fernando Brito e Abreu, (Lisbon New University)
Date Duration	Monday, 21 half day
Level	intermediate
Targeted Audience	Software engineers, software quality managers and project managers interested in implementing mechanisms for assessing and controlling the evolution of designs and teams using UML. Researchers interested in the topics of experimental software engineering, namely in the scope of object-oriented software engineering.