Software Quality Management 

Unit – IV 

G. Roy Antony Arnold 
Asst. Prof. / CSE
• The
h lines
li off code
d (LOC)
( OC) count isi usually
ll for
f
executable statements.
• LOC count represents the program size and
complexity, it is not a surprise that

.
• More recent studies point to a curvilinear
relationship between lines of code and defect
rate:
Maximum Source  Average Defect per
Lines of Modules 1,000 Source Lines
63 1.5
100 1.4
158 0.9
251 0.5
398 1.1
630 1.9
1000 1.3
>1000 1.4
• Wh
When moduled l sizei b
becomes very large,
l the
h
complexity increases to a level beyond a
programmer'ss immediate span of control and total
programmer
comprehension.
• The curvilinear model between size and defect
density sheds new light on software quality
engineering.
g g It implies
p that there mayy be an
optimal program size that can lead to the lowest
defect rate.
• Such an optimum may depend on language,
project, product, and environment; apparently
many more empirical
i i l investigations
i ti ti are needed.
d d
• Halstead (1977) distinguishes software
science from computer science.
• The premise of software science is that any
programming task consists of selecting and
arranging a finite number of program
“tokens”
tokens , which are
.
• A computer program, according
di to software
f
science,
.
• Th
The primitive
i iti measures off Halstead's
H l t d' software
ft science
i
are

• Based on these primitive measures, Halstead

developed a system of equations expressing

and other
features such as development effort and the projected
number of faults in the software.
Vocabulary, 
Length, 
Length,
Volume, 
Level, 
Difficulty, 
Difficulty
Effort, 
Faults, 
• The
h measurement off cyclomatic
l i complexity
l i by b
McCabe (1976) was designed

(maintainability).
• It is the classical graph theory cyclomatic
number,
.
• To determine the paths, the program
procedure is represented

.
• The general formula to compute cyclomatic
p y
complexity is:

• Where,
Wh
V(G) –
( ) Cyclomatic
y Number of G
e – Number of edges
n Number of nodes
n – Number of nodes
p – Number of unconnected parts of the graph
• If we count the edges, nodes, and 
disconnected parts of the graph, 

• The
The iteration test in a looping statement is 
iteration test in a looping statement is
counted as one binary decision. In the 
preceding simple example, since there are 
two binary decisions, M = 2 + 1 = 3
• The cyclomatic complexity metric is 
additive The complexity of several graphs
additive. The complexity of several graphs 
considered as a group is equal to the sum 
g p p
of the individual graphs' complexities.
needing detailed inspections.
g p
likely to 
have a low defect rate and therefore
have a low defect rate and therefore 
candidates for development without 
detailed inspections.
l

, identify troublesome code, and 
estimate testing effort
estimate testing effort.
• McCabe's cyclomatic complexity index is a
.
• It does not distinguish different kinds of control
flow complexity
p y such as
.
• In studying the quality and syntactic indicators
among a sample of twenty modules of a COBOL
compiler product,
product found that
at the module level can be estimated
through the following equations:
• Lo found that most developers were having difficulty 
p g y
mastering the DO WHILE construct.
• As a result, minimizing the use of DO WHILE was one of 
the actions the team took to reduce defects in the 
compiler product.
• Structure metrics try to take into account the 
St t ti t t t k i t t th
.
• The most common design structure metrics 
are the
are the  , which are 
which are
based on the  proposed by 
(1979) and 
(1978):
A count of the modules that call a given 
module
: A count of modules that are called by a 
given module
given module
 I l d l ith l f i
• In general, modules with a large fan‐in are 
. 
• In contrast, modules that are large and complex are 
likely to have a small fan‐in.
structure complexity is 
defined as:

• Henry and Selig's work (1990) defines a hybrid form 
of their information‐flow
of their information metric as
flow metric as

where, C
where, Cip – internal complexity of procedure p
internal complexity of procedure p
• Card and Glass (1990) developed a system complexity model
C d d Gl (1990) d l d t l it d l

Ct – System Complexity, S
System Complexity St – Structural (intermodule) 
Structural (intermodule)
complexity, Dt – Data (intermodule) complexity
• They defined relative system complexity as

n – no. Of modules in the system
• Structure complexity is further defined as
S l i i f h d fi d

S=
∑ f 2 (i )
n

Where S – Structural Complexity, f(i) – Fan‐out of Module i,      

n – no. Of modules in the system
• Data Complexity is further defined as
D t C l it i f th d fi d

Di – Data Complexity of Module i, V(i) 
Di Data Complexity of Module i, V(i) – I/O 
I/O
Variables in module i, f(i) – fan‐out of module i

D – Data (intramodule) Complexity, D(i) – Data 

Complexity of module i, n = Number of new 
modules in the system