Beyond Language Independent Object-Oriented Metrics: Model Independent Metrics

Software Metrics have become essential in software engineering for several reasons, among which quality assessment and reengineering. In the context of the European Esprit Project FAMOOS, whose main goal was to provide methodologies for the reengineering of large industrial software systems, we have developed the Moose Reengineering Environment, based on the language independent FAMIX metamodel. Moose includes a metrics engine which supports language independent metrics, since coping with software written in different implementation languages was one of the project’s main constraints. Our current research is pushing us towards the development and implementation of a metametamodel, which would include our metamodel and allow for several extension in different research directions, among which concept analysis, knowledge management and software evolution. In this article we want to present our current and future work for the transition from language independent to domain independent metrics.