Fuzzy Evaluation on Software Maintainability Based on Membership Degree Transformation New Algorithm M(1,2,3)

Abstract

Software maintainability means the ease with which a software system or component can be modified to correct faults, improve performance or other attributes, or adapt to a changed environment. For different software maintenance organizations or personnel, there are different concerns on software maintainability. If any one of the factors affecting the maintainability has not been completely resolved, or been unqualified, it will be affected. Therefore, in the evaluation process of software maintainability, there are a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity, so it is reasonable and scientific to apply fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method for software maintainability fuzzy evaluation. The core of fuzzy evaluation is membership degree transformation. But the transformation methods should be questioned, because redundant data in index membership degree is also used to compute object membership degree, which is not useful for object classification. The new algorithm is: using data mining technology based on entropy to mine knowledge information about object classification hidden in every index, affirm the relationship of object classification and index membership, eliminate the redundant data in index membership for object classification by defining distinguishable weight and extract valid values to compute object membership. The new algorithm of membership degree transformation includes three calculation steps which can be summarized as “effective, comparison and composition”, which is denoted as M(1,2,3). The paper applied the new algorithm in the fuzzy evaluation of software maintainability.