ALIGNMENT OF OPEN SOURCE TOOLS WITH THE NEW ISO 25010 STANDARD Focus on Maintainability Emanuel Irrazábal, Javier Garzás University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain Kybele Consulting S. L., Madrid, Spain Esperanza Marcos University Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain Keywords: ISO 25010, Maintainability, Tools, Product metrics. Abstract: Nowadays, quality and especially software product quality is becoming a hot topic in the context of Software Engineering. In this context, measures provide the basis for the improvement and, in particular, code measures provide direct visibility of product quality. Nevertheless, some organizations cannot afford these tools. Several studies have revealed that applying quality models in Small and Medium-Sized enterprises (SMEs) is a very challenging task. Related to this, open-source tools emerge as the answer to provide with the technical support to collect the information needed to assess the quality of software assets. In this work, we review how existing open-source tools fulfill the needs for quality measures raised when you want to assess product quality according to the new ISO/IEC 25010 standard, which has introduced changes in the characteristics of model quality over the previous model. We have focused on the characteristic of maintainability because of its historical significance and its direct impact on total costs. 1 INTRODUCTION Basically, the product quality model identifies quality characteristics and how they are decomposed Quality is currently recognized by companies as a into subcharacteristics. In this work we focus on one major asset to improve their competitiveness. At the of them: maintainability, since it has been same time it has become an essential requirement to historically recognised as one of the most relevant ensure that the processes and products developed issues given its direct impact over the cost of meet the needs of the customer. Although software software development and maintenance. Previous quality can be described according to several points studies point out at maintenance as the most of view, when it comes to software development, expensive phase along the product lifecycle, quality is traditionally related to product quality and involving twice the development costs (Pressman, process quality (Ebert 2009). 2002); (Saiedian and Carr 1997). As a response, different reference models for Measures provide the basis for the improvement product quality assessment have appeared. In and, in particular, code measures provide direct particular, the International Organization for visibility of product quality. Taking these Standardization (ISO) works in a new quality model, assumptions into consideration, the most suitable the ISO/IEC 25010 (ISO/IEC JTC 1 2011) that approach seems to be the use of commercial tools revises the standard ISO/IE 9126:2001, Software for the automatic acquisition of such measures engineering – Product quality (ISO 2001). (Pagano, 2006). Nevertheless, some organizations This new standard is currently published (since cannot afford these tools. Several studies have March 2011) and defines two quality models: a revealed that applying quality models in Small and quality in use model and a product quality model. Medium-Sized enterprises (SMEs) is a very challenging task (Saiedian and Carr 1997); (Staples Irrazábal E., Garzás J. and Marcos E.. 111 ALIGNMENT OF OPEN SOURCE TOOLS WITH THE NEW ISO 25010 STANDARD - Focus on Maintainability. DOI: 10.5220/0003449201110116 In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies (ICSOFT-2011), pages 111-116 ISBN: 978-989-8425-77-5 Copyright c 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.) ICSOFT 2011 - 6th International Conference on Software and Data Technologies et al. 2007) since it implies huge investments in and test (Heitlager, Kuipers & Visser 2007). Each terms of money, time and human resources. This characteristic in the ISO 25010 product quality type of organizations needs from adapted Software model is composed of a set of related Engineering practices to fit their size and the nature subcharacteristic. In this case, the maintainability is of their business (Dyba, 2005). composed of the following four subcharacteristics: All this given, this work reviews the technical analyzability, modifiability, testability and support that existing open-source tools for code reusability. analysis offer to the metrics that need to be collected To summarize, the value for the maintainability to measure the maintainability subcharacteristics subcharacteristics (affecting both models described specified by the ISO 25010 standard. This work is above) should be obtained by computing a set of partially carried out based on another work measurement functions over the capability of the (Irrazábal, 2010) made on the basis of ISO 9126 software. And this capability is determined by a set standard and taking into account only a selection of of static internal properties that can be measured. tools found in an open source software repository. Nevertheless, nothing it is said about how these The remainder of the paper is organized as functions should be defined, which ones should be follows. Section 2 presents a summary of the ISO the elements to compute and how the values of them 25010 standard, section 3 presents a summary of the have to be gathered. basic metrics proposed by the main measurement models that can be found currently. Section 4 details the tools chosen to measure the basic metrics and 3 CHOICE OF BASIC explains the selection criteria. In Section 5, it has been performed a qualitative analysis of the found MAINTAINABILITY METRICS tools. Finally, Section 6 summarizes the main findings of the study. This section summarizes the most important measurement models because of the impossibility of finding a single measurement model sufficiently recognized and that details the basic recommended 2 THE MAINTAINABILITY set of metrics to measure maintainability. CHARACTERISTIC IN Various measurement models have been ISO 25010 collected. We have added an acronym after each reference so that it can easily be named in Table 1. Before going deeply into this work, we first provide One of the studies that can be considered more with a brief overview of the maintainability interesting in this regard is (Riaz 2009)[M1]. This is characteristic in ISO 25010 product quality model, a systematic review that collects evidence on the importance of this characteristic on the quality in software maintainability prediction and metrics. The use model and the amendments respect of the ISO search has been made again. Regarding the search, 9126 maintainability characteristic. string has made customizations, adding two new The main objective of ISO 25010 is to provide a words: reusability and modifiability. This has been framework for defining and evaluating the quality of one of the sources that will yield maintainability software. To accomplish this, the standard defines measurement models. Another source has been the two models. direct search in online databases like ACM Digital The first is the product quality model that Library, Springer Link, IEEE Xplore, Science provides a set of quality characteristics relevant and Direct, etc. related to static properties of software and dynamic The encountered models relate a set of quality properties of the computer system. To that end, it metrics obtained from source code with the identifies eight characteristics that compose models maintainability subcharacteristics. We are not taken to assess product quality (listed above). into account those models directly related to the One of these is the maintainability, the most characteristic of maintainability. This made interesting for this paper. Here we want to know impossible to relate the metrics to the different how easy it would be to modify the software subcharacteristic. Yet, many of these metrics can be product. In some sense, it is a measure of the effort found in Table 1, named by other models. required to correct a defect or make a change that Main models found were as follows: Rüdiger preserves software functionality. Obviously, Lincke suggests a software quality model for the software is maintainable if it is easy to understand maintainability characteristic and indicate some 112 ALIGNMENT OF OPEN SOURCE TOOLS WITH THE NEW ISO 25010 STANDARD - Focus on Maintainability basic metrics associated. (Luijten, Visser & Zaidman 4 CHOICE OF TOOLS 2010) [M2]. In (Alshayeb 2009) [M3] reusability is associated with a subset of metrics. Another Given the summary of the basic metrics obtained in complete maintainability measurement model is the previous section, we have chosen the open- described in (Heitlager, Kuipers & Visser 2007) source tools that can analyze the software product [M4]. In this paper, authors mapped maintainability code. Once found the open source tools related to subcharacteristics (based on ISO 9126) onto source the static analysis of source code and related to the code properties, such as volume, complexity, maintainability we analyze the degree of duplication, unit length and number of modules. contribution of the metrics that are obtained. In (Mouchawrab, Briand & Labiche 2005) [M5] It has followed the approach used in a generic measurement framework for object- (Wangenheim 2009), reviewing the repositories of oriented software testability has been presented. existing open source projects and selecting the main Ioannis Samoladas presents a hierarchical quality repository to be