Building a software metrics visualization tool using the Visio COTS product

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Chen_Yu_MSc_001.pdf (32.61 MB)

Date

2010-03-02T22:22:01Z

Authors

Chen, Yu

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Abstract

Software metrics tools help people analyze, measure, and understand selected features and attributes of software systems. In recent years, more and more software metrics tools have incorporated sophisticated visualization capabilities to present software metrics results more effectively to end users. Despite advanced graphical user interfaces, adoption of custom stand-alone metrics tools is still a problem. Moreover, increasing functionality and complexity exacerbates this problem. To address this problem, we investigated how to build a software metrics research tool using Microsoft Visio -- a Commercial-Of-The-Shelf product that is familiar to most end users. As the industry leader for business drawing, Visio offers a complete solution for engineers and technicians who need to create detailed schematics. Hence, Visio is an ideal candidate for visualizing metrics data. With built-in scripting capabilities, Visio is end-user programmable and therefore developers are able to extend its functionality and design custom solutions. Our assumption is that industrial collaborators, who are already familiar with Visio, are more amenable to investigate and evaluate a software engineering research tool based on Visio than an idiosyncratic tool built from scratch. Moreover, Visio has a large user base and thus a Visio-based research tool has a better chance of being adopted in practice. In this thesis, we report on our investigations of using Visio for building a software metrics research tool, called Vimex. In particular, we describe the design and implementation of Vimex as well as its integration with REVisio -- a reverse engineering tool built on top of Visio. Finally, we report on our lessons learned in these investigations, discuss current limitations of this approach, and outline avenues for future research.

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software measurement

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URI

http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2294

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ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations)
Theses (Computer Science)
 
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