A new measure of software complexity based on cognitive weights

Author

Shao, Jingqiu ; Wang, Yingxu

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Calgary Univ., Alta., Canada

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

4-7 May 2003

Firstpage

1333

Abstract

One of the central problems in software engineering is the inherited complexity. Since software is the result of human creative activities, cognitive informatics plays an important role in understanding the fundamental characteristics of software. This paper models one of the fundamental characteristics of software, complexity, by examining the cognitive weights of basic control structures of software. Based on this approach a new concept of cognitive functional size of software is developed. Comparative case studies between the cognitive complexity and physical sizes of 23 programs are reported. The cognitive functional size provides a foundation for cross-platform analysis of complexities, sizes, and comprehension effort of software specifications and implementations in the phases of design, implementation, or maintenance in software engineering.

Keywords

cognition; program control structures; software metrics; cognitive weight; cross-platform analysis; human creative activity; software complexity measurement; software control structure; software engineering; software fundamental characteristics; Character recognition; Cognitive informatics; Computer architecture; Drives; Humans; Software engineering; Software maintenance; Software measurement; Software systems; Weight control;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2003. IEEE CCECE 2003. Canadian Conference on

ISSN

0840-7789

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7781-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CCECE.2003.1226146

Filename

1226146