Date of Award

2001

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty

Faculty of Communications, Health and Science

First Supervisor

Dr Thomas O'Neill

Abstract

This work describes a project that investigates the use of software metrics based on measurement of source code in industrial software development. Literature is examined relating to considerations of quality in industry; to software engineering; to emergent technologies in the software industry including the object-oriented paradigm and software patterns; to software product and process metrics; and to cultural factors affecting workplaces in the software industry. It then expounds theoretical and practical work aimed at specifying, designing and implementing a source code analyzer for use in a typical industrial project setting. There is an explanation of the design and outcomes of a questionnaire survey, conducted over the Internet, of developers with an interest in using metrics techniques to analyse source code. Finally, there is a description of a controlled experiment which attempts to detect a benefit from use of source code metrics as information to support a simple software engineering task.

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