Successful Evolution of Software Systems

ness measures Abstractness measures are in a central positionfor both reverse engineering measures and the five categories, becauseabstraction and transformation are significant notions in reverse engineer-ing, crossing the entire reverse engineering process. Both abstraction andtransformation are used to enhance the abstraction level of the software. Abstractness measures are mainly used to measure the abstractness ofan object program, which is related to characteristics of complexity. Inreverse engineering, abstractness measures are concentrated on structuralabstraction, which shows the abstraction level of the program by analyzingthe structure of the program (i.e., by accounting and processing the internalmechanism of a system or program). This includes control flow (connec-tions among nodes, branches, and loops) and data flow (the degree ofabstraction of the data). Also, abstractness is a direct index of theunderstandability, which relates to cognitive complexity (measuring theweight of high abstract-level constructs in the program). The main propertyof abstractions and transformations in the reverse engineering process ishiding irrelevant information. Therefore, to represent hidden irrelevantinformation numerically is a means of measuring the indicated abstractness.Also, values of abstractness are always increasing following reducing thenumber of pieces of irrelevant information (i.e., reflecting the raisingabstract level as indices).ness measures are mainly used to measure the abstractness ofan object program, which is related to characteristics of complexity. Inreverse engineering, abstractness measures are concentrated on structuralabstraction, which shows the abstraction level of the program by analyzingthe structure of the program (i.e., by accounting and processing the internalmechanism of a system or program). This includes control flow (connec-tions among nodes, branches, and loops) and data flow (the degree ofabstraction of the data). Also, abstractness is a direct index of theunderstandability, which relates to cognitive complexity (measuring theweight of high abstract-level constructs in the program). The main propertyof abstractions and transformations in the reverse engineering process ishiding irrelevant information. Therefore, to represent hidden irrelevantinformation numerically is a means of measuring the indicated abstractness.Also, values of abstractness are always increasing following reducing thenumber of pieces of irrelevant information (i.e., reflecting the raisingabstract level as indices). Abstractness metric 1: Abstractness based on McCabe’s cyclomaticcomplexity measure (ABST-MCCM)ness metric 1: Abstractness based on McCabe’s cyclomaticcomplexity measure (ABST-MCCM) Definition 7.12 The reciprocal of the number of linearly independentcircuits in a program flowgraph, which is calculated based on McCabe’scyclomatic complexity measure [61].160Process for Evolution