Evaluating Dependency based Package-level Metrics for Multi-objective Maintenance Tasks

Role of packages in organization and maintenance of software systems has acquired vital importance in recent research of software quality. With an advancement in modularization approaches of object oriented software, packages are widely considered as re-usable and maintainable entities of objectoriented software architectures, specially to avoid complicated dependencies and insure software design of well identified services. In this context, recently research study of H. Abdeen on automatic optimization of package dependencies provide composite frame of metrics for package quality and overall source code modularization. There is an opportunity to conduct comprehensive empirical analysis over proposed metrics for assessing their usefulness and application for fault-prediction, design flaw detection, identification of source code anomalies and architectural erosion. In this paper, we examine impact of these dependency optimization based metrics in wide spectrum of software quality for single package and entire software modularization. Our experimental work is conducted over open source software systems through statistical methodology based on cross validation fault-prediction and correlation. We conclude with empirical evidence that dependency based package modularization metrics provide more accurate view for predicting fault-prone packages and improvement of overall software structure. Thus, application of these metrics can help the developers and software practitioners to insure proactive management of the source code dependencies and avoid design flaws during software development. Keywords—Software quality; package-level metrics; software modularization; fault-prediction