Metric framework for object-oriented real-time systems specification languages

In this paper, a framework for maintaining control of and analyzing object-oriented system specifications of real-time systems by using a set of metrics covering technical, cognitive, and process-oriented views is presented. The indicators defined can be used for monitoring the evolution of system quality and for effort prediction. The use of metrics for the estimation of reusability, verifiability, and testability is analyzed. The metric framework is integrated in a CASE tool named TOOMS, which is based on TROL, a dual object-oriented language with both descriptive and operational capabilities. TOOMS allows one to describe the system at different levels of structural abstractions and at different levels of specification detail, such as many other languages and models for teal-time systems (e.g., OSDL, ObjectTime, ObjectChart). According to this, the metrics proposed are capable of producing estimations at each level of system specification, thus allowing incremental specification/metrication. The metric framework must be regarded as a support for controlling the process of software development in order to guarantee the final quality.