NPATH: a measure of execution path complexity and its applications

Nejmeh, Brian A.

doi:10.1145/42372.42379

Cited by 120 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…However, this number was derived from his experience. Deriving thresholds from experience has also been done by other authors (Coleman et al 1995;Nejmeh 1988). Benchmarks are also a common strategy for deriving thresholds.…”

Section: Detection Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Code smells for Model-View-Controller architectures

et al. 2017

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Previous studies have shown the negative effects that low-quality code can have on maintainability proxies, such as code change-and defect-proneness. One of the symptoms of low-quality code are code smells, defined as sub-optimal implementation choices. While this definition is quite general and seems to suggest a wide spectrum of smells that can affect software systems, the research literature mostly focuses on the set of smells defined in the catalog by Fowler and Beck, reporting design issues that can potentially affect any kind of system, regardless of their architecture (e.g., Complex Class). However, systems adopting a specific architecture (e.g., the Model-View-Controller pattern) can be affected by other types of poor practices that only manifest themselves in the chosen architecture. We present a catalog of six smells tailored to MVC applications and defined by surveying/interviewing 53 MVC developers. We validate our catalog from different perspectives. First, we assess the relationship between the defined smells and the code change-and defect-proneness. Second, we investigate when these smells are introduced and how long they survive. Third, we survey 21 developers to verify their perception of the defined smells. Fourth, since our catalog has been mainly defined together with developers adopting a specific Java framework in their MVC applications (e.g., Spring), we interview four expert developers working with different technologies for the implementation of their MVC applications to check the generalizability of our catalog. The achieved results show that the defined Web MVC smells (i) more often than not, have more chances of being subject to changes and defects, (ii) are mostly introduced when the affected file (i.e., the file containing the smell) is committed for the first time in the repository and survive for long time in the system, (iii) are perceived by developers as severe problems, and (iv) generalize to other languages/frameworks.

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Section: Detection Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Code smells for Model-View-Controller architectures

et al. 2017

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“…Related to this was the recurring theme of striving for simplicity-Bsimplify, simplify, simplify^-and the emphasis once again of SOLID/ Clean Code-like principles (Martin 2003(Martin , 2009) of separating conditionals into separate methods, one abstraction per method etc. There was some identification of some useful tools (SonarQube) and some metrics: cyclomatic complexity, npath (Nejmeh 1988). Once again, the recurring themes of review, experience and the relationship with the ease of testing were highlighted.…”

Section: Design Practices-complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Recognising object-oriented software design quality: a practitioner-based questionnaire survey

Stevenson

Wood

2017

Software Qual J

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Design quality is vital if software is to be maintainable. What practices do developers actually use to achieve design quality in their day-to-day work and which of these do they find most useful? To discover the extent to which practitioners concern themselves with object-oriented design quality and the approaches used when determining quality in practice, a questionnaire survey of 102 software practitioners, approximately half from the UK and the remainder from elsewhere around the world was used. Individual and peer experience are major contributors to design quality. Classic design guidelines, well-known lower level practices, tools and metrics all can also contribute positively to design quality. There is a potential relationship between testing practices and design quality. Inexperience, time pressures, novel problems, novel technology, and imprecise or changing requirements may have a negative impact on quality. Respondents with most experience are more confident in their design decisions, place more value on reviews by team leads and are more likely to rate design quality as very important. For practitioners, these results identify the techniques and tools that other practitioners find effective. For researchers, the results highlight a need for more work investigating the role of experience in the design process and the contribution experience makes to quality. There is also the potential for more in-depth studies of how practitioners are actually using design guidance, including Clean Code. Lastly, the potential relationship between testing practices and design quality merits further investigation.

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“…There are several methods to calculate complexity measures were investigated, e.g. different version of LOC [9], NPATH [10], McCabe"s cyclomatic number [12], Data quality [12], Halstead"s software science [12], [13] etc.…”

Section: ) Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The control flow measure by NPATH, invented by Nejmeh [10], it measures the acyclic execution paths, NPATH is a metric which counts the number of execution path through a functions. One of the popular software complexity measures NPATH complexities (NC), is determined as:…”

Section: ) Npath Evaluation Of Control Flow Graphmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our goal is to identify "best paths" from the set of covered paths which is infinite or greater number [8]. The term "best" is related to some program characteristics which can influence the testing activities: (i) complexity [9] (ii) NPATH [10] (iii) feasibility [11] and (iv) Halstead software science [12], [13]. These program characteristics plays vital role to achieve testing objective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Efficient Path Selection Strategy Based on Static Analysis for Regression Testing

Debbarma¹,

Tiwari²,

Misra³

2013

IJCTE

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Abstract-Regression testing is used to revalidate modified program and provide confidence that changes does not harm the behavior of the existing code. Test suites grows in size as software evolve, a simple approach of regression testing is re-test all approach in which all the pre-existing test suites are executed on the code but it is too expensive and increase the cost of testing activity. Different problems have been involved with regression testing, e.g. test suites minimization problem, test selection problem, coverage identification problem, test case execution problem, test case maintenance problem etc. Another problem may occur, when tester has to select the changed paths from the set of modified paths for test case execution. This paper presents a new path selection strategy based on static analysis for regression testing which enables the tester to execute the test cases in an order that increases their effectiveness to find faults taking minimum efforts. With the proposed approach, tester can select the paths among the set of paths in an order to achieve the testing objective. Infeasible paths are also identified by the proposed approach which can reduce the effort, time, and cost.

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NPATH: a measure of execution path complexity and its applications

Cited by 120 publications

References 6 publications

Code smells for Model-View-Controller architectures

Code smells for Model-View-Controller architectures

Recognising object-oriented software design quality: a practitioner-based questionnaire survey

Efficient Path Selection Strategy Based on Static Analysis for Regression Testing

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