Measuring metadata-based aspect-oriented code in model-driven engineering

Abstract

Metrics measurement for cost estimation in model-driven engineering (MDE) is complex because of number of different artifacts that can potentially be generated. The complexity arises as auto-generated code, manually added code, and non-code artifacts must be sized separately for their contribution to overall effort. In this paper, we address measurement of a special kind of code artifacts called metadata-based aspect-oriented code. Our MDE toolset delivers large database-centric business-critical enterprise applications. We cater to special needs of enterprises by providing support for customization along three concerns, namely design strategies, architecture, and technology platforms (〈d, a, t〉) in customer-specific applications. Code that is generated for these customizations is conditional in nature, in the sense that model-to-text transformation takes place differently based on choices along these concerns. In our recent efforts to apply Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) II to our MDE practices, we discovered that while the measurement of the rest of code and non-code artifacts can be easily automated, product-line-like nature of code generation for specifics of 〈d, a, t〉 requires special treatment. Our contribution is the use of feature models to capture variations in these dimensions and their mapping to code size estimates. Our initial implementation suggests that this approach scales well considering the size of our applications and takes a step forward in providing complete cost estimation for MDE applications using COCOMO II.