Journal of Computer Science and Technology ›› 2019, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (5): 1063-1078.doi: 10.1007/s11390-019-1960-6

Special Issue: Software Systems

• Software Systems • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Threshold Extraction Framework for Software Metrics

Mohammed Alqmase, Mohammad Alshayeb*, Lahouari Ghouti   

  1. Information and Computer Science Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
  • Received:2018-10-13 Revised:2019-03-23 Online:2019-08-31 Published:2019-08-31
  • Contact: Mohammad Alshayeb E-mail:alshayeb@kfupm.edu.sa
  • About author:Mohammed Alqmase received his M.S. degree in computer science from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, in 2019, and his B.S. degree in information technology (IT) from King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah, in 2013. He worked as a content management system analyst for Hippo CMS in 2017. He also worked as an instructor in Sana'a Community College, Sana, Yemen, from 2013 to 2015. His research interests include sentiment analysis, natural language processing, machine learning, algorithms and software engineering.

Software metrics are used to measure different attributes of software. To practically measure software attributes using these metrics, metric thresholds are needed. Many researchers attempted to identify these thresholds based on personal experiences. However, the resulted experience-based thresholds cannot be generalized due to the variability in personal experiences and the subjectivity of opinions. The goal of this paper is to propose an automated clustering framework based on the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm where clusters are generated using a simplified 3-metric set (LOC, LCOM, and CBO). Given these clusters, different threshold levels for software metrics are systematically determined such that each threshold reflects a specific level of software quality. The proposed framework comprises two major steps:the clustering step where the software quality historical dataset is decomposed into a fixed set of clusters using the EM algorithm, and the threshold extraction step where thresholds, specific to each software metric in the resulting clusters, are estimated using statistical measures such as the mean (μ) and the standard deviation (σ) of each software metric in each cluster. The paper's findings highlight the capability of EM-based clustering, using a minimum metric set, to group software quality datasets according to different quality levels.

Key words: metric threshold; expectation maximization; empirical study;

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