Metric Framework for Object-Oriented Real-Time Systems Specification Languages

Abstract A framework for maintaining under control and analyzing object-oriented system specifcations of real-time systems by using a set of metrics covering technical, cognitive and process-oriented views is presented. The indicators defned can be used for monitoring the evolution of system quality and for efort prediction. The use of metrics for the estimation of reusability, verifability and testability is an­alyzed. The metric framework is integrated in a CASE tool named TOOMS, which is based on TROL, a dual object-oriented language with both descriptive and operational capabilities. TOOMS allows to describe the system at diferent levels of structural abstractions, and at diferent levels of specifcation detail such as many other languages and models for real-time systems (e.g., OSDL, ObjectTime, Ob­jectChart). According to this, the metrics proposed are capable of producing estimations at each level of system specifcation, thus allowing the incremental specifcationjmetrication. The metric framework must be regarded as a support for controlling the process of software development in order to guarantee the fnal quality. Index terrs: analysis and design metrics, measurement, reactive systems, method integration, object­oriented model, reuse, IO-based, CASE too