Title
Measuring distance between program features
Abstract
In this paper we present a metric to determine the distance between the features of a software system. Such a measurement can elucidate how features of the system being examined are close to each other. We first use an execution slice-based technique to identify a set of code (basic blocks in our case) that is used to implement each feature. Then, depending on whether the execution frequency of each block is considered during the construction of such sets of code, a static as well as a dynamic distance is computed for each pair of features. These two types of distance differ in that the former computes the distance between two features only by how these features are implemented in the system, while the latter also takes into account how each feature is executed based on a user's operational profile. In other words, the static distance quantitatively gives the closeness of two features from the systemimplementation point of view, whereas the dynamic distance presents such closeness from the users' execution point of view. To illustrate the use of our metric, we report a case study on a Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability and Performance Evaluator (SHARPE). The results of our study suggest that the distance metric discussed in this paper can provide a good measurement, in a quantitative way, of how close two program features are. Such information can also serve as a good start to understanding how a modification made to one feature is likely to affect other features.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1109/CMPSAC.2002.1045019
COMPSAC
Keywords
Field
DocType
program slicing,reverse engineering,software metrics,software performance evaluation,software reliability,SHARPE,Symbolic Hierarchical Automated Reliability and Performance Evaluator,case study,dynamic distance,execution slice-based technique,operational profile,program comprehension,program feature distance measurement,software metric,static distance,system implementation
Program slicing,Computer science,System testing,Closeness,Reverse engineering,Metric (mathematics),Software system,Real-time computing,Software metric,Program comprehension
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
0730-3157
0-7695-1727-7
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.39
8
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
W. Eric Wong135124.66
Swapna S. Gokhale286077.93
Joseph Robert Horgan31232132.79