Utilizing CK metrics suite to UML models: A case study of Microarray MIDAS software

Software metrics provide essential means for software practitioners to assess its quality. However, to assess software quality, it is important to assess its UML models because of UML wide and recent usage as an object-oriented modeling language. But the issue is which type of software metrics can be utilized on UML models. One of the most important software metrics suite is Chidamber and Kemerer metrics suite, known by CK suite. In the current work, an automated tool is developed to compute the six CK metrics by gathering the required information from class diagrams, activity diagrams, and sequence diagrams. In addition, extra information is collected from system designer, such as the relation between methods and their corresponding activity diagrams and which attributes they use. The proposed automated tool operates on XMI standard file format to provide independence from a specific UML tool. To evaluate the applicability and quality of this tool, it has been applied to two examples: an online registration system and one of the bioinformatics Microarray tools (MIDAS).