This paper shows that existing software metric tools interpret and implement the definitions of object-oriented software metrics differently. This delivers tool-dependent metrics results and has even implications on the results of analyses based on these metrics results. In short, the metrics-based assessment of a software system and measures taken to improve its design differ considerably from tool to tool. To support our case, we conducted an experiment with a number of commercial and free metrics tools. We calculated metrics values using the same set of standard metrics for three software systems of different sizes. Measurements show that, for the same software system and metrics, the metrics values are tool depended. We also defined a (simple) software quality model for "maintainability" based on the metrics selected. It defines a ranking of the classes that are most critical wrt. maintainability. Measurements show that even the ranking of classes in a software system is metrics tool dependent.

Software maintenance tools for program analysisand refactoring rely on a meta-model capturing the relevantproperties of programs. However, what is considered relevantmay change when the tools are extended with new analyses andrefactorings, and new programming languages. This paper proposesa language independent meta-model and an architecture toconstruct instances thereof, which is extensible for new analyses,refactorings, and new front-ends of programming languages. Dueto the loose coupling between analysis-, refactoring-, and frontend-components, new components can be added independentlyand reuse existing ones. Two maintenance tools implementingthe meta-model and the architecture, VIZZANALYZER and XDEVELOP,serve as a proof of concept.

Software maintenance tools for program analysis and refactoring rely on a metamodel capturing the relevant properties of programs. However, what is considered relevant may change when the tools are extended with new analyses, refactorings, and new programming languages. This paper proposes a language independent metamodel and an architecture to construct instances thereof, which is extensible for new analyses, refactorings, and new front-ends of programming languages. Due to the loose coupling between analysis, refactoring, and front-end components, new components can be added independently and reuse existing ones. Two maintenance tools implementing the metamodel and the architecture, VizzAnalyzer and X-develop, serve as proof of concept.

Software maintenance tools for program-analysis and refactoring rely on a meta-model capturing the relevant properties of programs. However, what is considered relevant may change when the tools are extended with new analyses and refactorings, and new programming languages. This paper proposes a language independent meta-model and an architecture to construct instances thereof which is extensible for new analyses, refactorings, and new front-ends of programming languages. Due to the loose coupling between analysis-, refactoring-, and front-end-components, new components can be added independently and reuse existing ones. Two maintenance tools implementing the meta-model and the architecture, VizzAnalyzer and X-DEVELOP, serve as a proof of concept

The VizzAnalyzer is a framework for analyses and visualizations of software. It has been developed over years, to a great deal by students and PhD students. In between it has been re-engineered to improve the software quality. In this paper, we publish the results of the software quality measurements over different versions of the VizzAnalyzer framework with well established quality metrics. Some metrics uncover qualities we were aiming at in our re-engineering, e.g. maintainability, some others uncover qualities we were deliberately ignoring or did not even think about, e.g. good "object-orientedness". Our measurements validate our expectation: the former metrics significantly improve over the versions whereas the latter contain positive as well as negative surprises