基于UML的软件体系结构的定量评估

UML Based Quantitative Software Architecture Evaluation

软件体系结构是软件开发过程的关键制品,应该尽早地分析和评估其质量.目前研究的软件体系结构评估主要集中在基于场景的评估方法,其特点是定性的、主观的、无需专用的体系结构描述语言.本文提出以统一建模语言UML作为软件体系结构描述语言以及度量的软件体系结构的定量评估.针对UML的可视化、多视图、半形式化以及一致地应用在整个软件开发活动的特性,提出一组UML度量,从UML图所表达的信息含量、可视化影响以及图形建模元素之间的关联性这三个方面度量软件体系结构.分析并讨论这组UML度量在评估软件体系结构的规模、复杂性和结构性等质量属性方面的应用.

The architecture of a software system is a critical artifact in the software development and should be evaluated as early as possible. Recent efforts to software architecture evaluation are concentrated on scenario-based methods which are qualitative, subjective and not needed special architecture description languages. This paper studies an approach to quantitative soft- ware architecture evaluation based on UML models and measurement. UML is a visual modeling language with well-formed syntax and semantics, and uniformly used in various development stages. By utilization of these features three types of metrics for UML models are proposed. They measure the amount of information, visual effect and connectivity between modeling elements in different UML diagrams. The application of these metrics in evaluating software architecture qualities such as system scale, complexity and structural characteristics is discussed.