Building Multi-language, Multi-system Quality Models Using Features and APIs

《软件杂志》在2010年对世界500强软件公司进行了排名：20家来自加拿大，是仅次于美国的第二高的国家。加拿大的信息和通信技术（ICT）部门包括37,400家公司，其中33,000家公司开发软件，雇用数十万开发人员开发和维护这些系统。保守的研究估计，开发人员80%的时间和精力都花在了维护上。因此，对系统可维护性的任何改进都可以在时间、工作和降低成本方面获得重要的收益。可维护性仍然是软件系统的一个难以捉摸的特征，度量可维护性的软件质量模型难以构建并应用于不同的系统。事实上，高质量的模型目前尚未开发。造成这些困难的原因有三个：(1)每个软件系统都是独特的，因此为一个系统建立的模型通常不适用于另一个系统；(2)现代系统经常结合不同的编程范例，例如，面向对象和功能，因此，降低了它们的可维护性，使质量模型的构建复杂化；(3)可维护性的子特征定义不清，因此模型是部分定义的，使用代理度量，通常排除了系统的许多方面。系统的各个方面包括实现习惯用法、设计选择、架构风格、用户可观察特性、内部和外部api，以及使用的框架和库。我建议通过(1)考虑系统的更多方面和(2)考虑系统的“类”来解决这些困难。基于我以前和当前的研究工作，我将考虑提供类似服务的特性和应用程序编程接口（api），它们可以在不同的系统中找到，具有不同的实现、设计、架构和框架，以不同的编程语言组合实现。我将使用类似的服务，例如撤消/重做，作为在“类”中研究软件系统的起点，而不是作为独特的个体。我还将使用特性、api、度量和出现的设计（反）模式来构建关注于多语言、多范式系统的可维护性的软件质量模型。我将在大型、多语言、多范式系统（如Mozilla Firefox或SFL Ring）上评估这些模型。我将执行三种类型的验证：(1)通过(2)开发人员的研究（与参与者）和(3)社会研究（例如，调查）进行定量和定性的验证。因此，我想促进我们对影响其可维护性的软件系统方面的理解，并为开发人员提供具体的、有用的方法来度量这种可维护性，以便他们能够改进它，从而降低维护成本。

Software Magazine ranked the World's top 500 software companies in 2010: 20 were from Canada, the second-highest national percentage after the United States. Canada's information and communication technologies (ICT) sector include 37,400 companies, among which 33,000 develop software, employing hundreds of thousands of developers to develop and maintain these systems. Conservative studies estimate that 80% of the developer's time and effort are invested in maintenance. Hence, any improvement to the maintainability of systems could results in important gains in time, effort, and, thus, cost reduction. Maintainability remains an elusive characteristic of software systems and software quality models measuring maintainability are difficult to build and apply on different systems. Indeed, quality models are currently under-developed. There are three reasons for these difficulties: (1) each software system is unique, thus a model built for one system often does not apply on another, (2) modern systems often combine different programming paradigms, e.g., object-oriented and functional, thus, lowering their maintainability and complexifying the building of quality models, and (3) the sub-characteristics of maintainability are ill-defined, thus models are defined partially, using proxy measures, often excluding many aspects of the systems. Aspects of the systems include implementation idioms, design choices, architecture styles, user-observable features, internal and external APIs, and used frameworks and libraries. I propose to tackle these difficulties (1) by considering more aspects of the systems and (2) by considering “classes” of systems. Building on my previous and current research work, I will consider features and application programming interfaces (APIs) that provide similar services and that can be found in different systems with different implementations, designs, architectures, and frameworks implemented in different combinations of programming languages. I will use similar services, e.g., undo/redo, as a starting point to study software systems in “classes” and not as unique individual. I will also use features, APIs, metrics, and occurrences of design (anti)patterns to build software quality models focusing on maintainability of multi-language, multi-paradigm systems. I will evaluate these models on large, multi-language, multi-paradigm systems, like Mozilla Firefox or SFL Ring. I will perform three types of validations: (1) quantitatively and qualitatively through (2) developers' studies (with participants) and (3) social studies (e.g., surveys). Thus, I want to contribute to advance our understanding of the aspects of software systems impacting their maintainability and provide developers with concrete, useful means to measure this maintainability so that they can improve it and, thus, can reduce maintenance costs.