Assessing the changeability of component-based system design: a controlled experiment

ABSTRACT

Component-based software system (CBSS) must be designed and implemented not only to meet the current customers’ requirements, but also to be receptive to future changes. Therefore, most often, one or more components of the system may need to be changed. Usually, designers do not exactly know what the future state looks like. The need for change continues to increase as technology evolves. For the reusable software components, this modification may be compromised, perhaps for the system architecture that comprises components or interfaces that are difficult to change. An essential way for controlling and managing such changes is to develop metrics as an indicator of changeability. The aim of this paper is to present the relationship between the proposed component information flow-based measures and changeability of software components. Although the component information flow complexity (CIFC) and component coupling (CC) could make a significant contribution to the understanding of software design processes, they need to be adjusted to an external quality attributed to determine the usefulness of the metrics. A controlled change experiment was conducted involving eighteen software components and twelve changes for verifying certain hypotheses to justify the validity of the measured external attribute. The empirical findings showed that there was a significant statistical correlation between the proposed information-flow-based metrics and changeability of software components. CBSS designers can achieve some quality insight in terms of changeability if the metrics are applied in the right context.

KEYWORDS:

• Software component
• Component-based development
• Changeability
• Metrics
• Quality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Majdi Abdellatief

Majdi Abdellatief is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Informatics at Inaya Medical Colleges, Suadi Arabia. He holds a Doctoral degree in Software Engineering from University Putra, Malaysia, M.Sc. in Information Technology from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Alneelain University, Sudan. His research interests include software measurements, Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE), and Software Quality.

Abu Bakar Md Sultan

Abu Bakar Md Sultan received his Bachelor of Computer Science from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 1993, Master and Ph.D. from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). He is currently an academic member at the Faculty of Information System and Computer Science of UPM. His research interests includes optimization and Search-based Software Engineering (SBSE)

Abdul Azim Abdul Ghani

Abdul Azim Abd Ghani is a professor in the Department of Information System at University Putra Malaysia. His research interests include software measurements, software testing, and software quality. He holds a Doctoral degree in Software Engineering from University of Strathclyde, M.Sc. in Computer Science from University of Miami, B.Sc. in Mathematics/ Computer Science from Indiana State University, and is a member of the IEEE.

Abubaker Wahaballa

Abubaker Wahaballa is researcher at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. He holds a Doctoral degree in Cyber Security. He is also a visiting professor at Arab East College, Saudi Arabia. His research interests include information technology communication, IT security, cryptography, and Steganography.