An empirical investigation into the effect of slice types on slice-based cohesion metrics

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• 作者：Yibiao Yang ; Yangyang Zhao ; Changsong Liu ; Hongmin Lu ; Yuming Zhou ; ^{cs.zhou.yuming@gmail.com" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Baowen Xu
• 关键词：Cohesion ; End slice ; Metric slice ; Metrics
• 刊名：Information and Software Technology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：July 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：75
• 期：Complete
• 页码：90-104
• 全文大小：2367 K

文摘

There is a debate about whether end slice or metric slice is preferable for computing slice-based cohesion metrics. However, up till now, there is no consensus about this issue.

Objective

We aim to investigate the relationship between end-slice-based and metric-slice-based cohesion metrics and then determine which type of slice is preferable for computing slice-based cohesion metrics.

Method

We used forty widely used open-source software systems to conduct the study. First, we compute the baseline values for end-slice-based and metric-slice-based cohesion metrics. Then, we investigate their relationships with module size. Finally, we employ correlation analysis and principal component analysis to analyze the relationships between end-slice-based and metric-slice-based cohesion metrics.

Results

End-slice-based and metric-slice-based cohesion metrics have similar baseline metric values. Furthermore, they exhibit a similar negative correlation with module size. In particular, the results from correlation analysis and principal component analysis reveal that they essentially measure the same cohesion dimensions.

Conclusion

From the viewpoint of metric values, there is little difference between end-slice-based and metric-slice-based cohesion metrics. We hence recommend choosing end slice for computing slice-based cohesion metrics in practice, as extra cost involved in data collection could be avoided.