Measurement of ADA Throughout the Software Development Life Cycle

Quality enhancement has now become a major factor in software production. Software metrics have demonstrated their ability to predict source code complexity at design time and to predict maintainability of a software system from source code. Obviously metrics can assist software developers in the enhancement of quality. Tools which automatically generate metrics for Ada are increasing in popularity. This paper describes an existing tool which produces software metrics for Ada that may be used throughout the software development life cycle. This tool, while calculating established metrics, also calculates a new structure metric that is designed to capture communication interface complexity. Measuring designs written using Ada as a PDL allows designers early feedback on possible problem areas in addition to giving direction on testing strategies.