Software Quality Evaluation Research Articles

Development of a Web Application for Learning Basic Mandarin Chinese

The College of Information and Communications Technology of Bulacan State University offers Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language course in one of its programs. The main objective of this study is to develop a web application that focuses on giving Mandarin Chinese dictionaries, lessons, assessments, and tests. Upon the development of the web application, topics under basic Mandarin Chinese, covering Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì (HSK) Levels 1 and 2, are considered as its contents since they contain essential topics for learning Mandarin Chinese. The web application for basic Mandarin Chinese was evaluated by its intended end-users and technical experts in web application development using the standard software quality evaluation criteria based on ISO/IEC 25010. The acceptability ratings of intended end-users and technical experts are 4.56 and 4.58, respectively, with a descriptive interpretation of Extremely Acceptable. These ratings show that the Mandarin Chinese language web application was developed well, with appropriate functionalities, features, and content. Upon its implementation, this Mandarin Chinese language web application may be used as an additional tool in teaching and learning Mandarin Chinese.

What really changes when developers intend to improve their source code: a commit-level study of static metric value and static analysis warning changes

Many software metrics are designed to measure aspects that are believed to be related to software quality. Static software metrics, e.g., size, complexity and coupling are used in defect prediction research as well as software quality models to evaluate software quality. Static analysis tools also include boundary values for complexity and size that generate warnings for developers. While this indicates a relationship between quality and software metrics, the extent of it is not well understood. Moreover, recent studies found that complexity metrics may be unreliable indicators for understandability of the source code. To explore this relationship, we leverage the intent of developers about what constitutes a quality improvement in their own code base. We manually classify a randomized sample of 2,533 commits from 54 Java open source projects as quality improving depending on the intent of the developer by inspecting the commit message. We distinguish between perfective and corrective maintenance via predefined guidelines and use this data as ground truth for the fine-tuning of a state-of-the art deep learning model for natural language processing. The benchmark we provide with our ground truth indicates that the deep learning model can be confidently used for commit intent classification. We use the model to increase our data set to 125,482 commits. Based on the resulting data set, we investigate the differences in size and 14 static source code metrics between changes that increase quality, as indicated by the developer, and changes unrelated to quality. In addition, we investigate which files are targets of quality improvements. We find that quality improving commits are smaller than non-quality improving commits. Perfective changes have a positive impact on static source code metrics while corrective changes do tend to add complexity. Furthermore, we find that files which are the target of perfective maintenance already have a lower median complexity than files which are the target of non-pervective changes. Our study results provide empirical evidence for which static source code metrics capture quality improvement from the developers point of view. This has implications for program understanding as well as code smell detection and recommender systems.

MaLTeSQuE 2022 Workshop Summary

Welcome to the sixth edition of the workshop on Machine Learning Techniques for Software Quality Evaluation (MaLTeSQuE 2022), held in Singapore, November 18th, 2022, co-located with ESEC / FSE 2022 [1]. Six papers from all over the world were submitted, five of them were accepted. The program also featured two keynotes by Yuriy Brun on the promise and perils of using machine learning when engineering software and Mike Papadakis on the best practices in assessment of deep learning testing methods.

Web-based Database Courses E-Learning Application

This study was focused on the development of a web e-learning application for the database courses taken by Information Technology (IT) students at the College of Information and Communications Technology (CICT) of Bulacan State University (BulSU). The research methodology used in this project was the cross-sectional developmental approach. The Agile Software Development methodology was followed phase by phase, up to the development phase, to develop the system. It was used to produce the desired output rapidly while allowing users to go back through phases without finishing the whole cycle. The goal of this study was to create a web application that teaches Structured Query Language (SQL) in both the MySQL and SQL Server approaches. The application contains quizzes and examinations to allow self-assessment of learning. Additionally, an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) simulation was included to provide ERD creations in a drag-and-drop fashion. This study was evaluated using ISO/IEC 25010 software quality evaluation criteria. The study's overall mean was 4.24, 4.41, and 4.33, all with the descriptive meaning of "Very Good," which showed that the system performed its necessary functions as perceived by students, faculty members, and experts, respectively. In summary, the e-learning web application for database courses was fully developed. Moreover, the entity-relationship diagram was integrated well within the system and is accessible to the users. Lastly, respondents evaluated the developed web application using the ISO/IEC 25010 with an overall descriptive interpretation of "Very Good." For future developments of the study, an administrator panel may be developed to manage users and do other administrative tasks. Lastly, higher-order thinking skills questions on assessments and quizzes may be included.

A Web-Based Training and Evaluation System for Government Institutions with Application of Data Analytics

The study aimed to evaluate the Web-based Training and Evaluation System for use in training workforces. The system was intended to evaluate the ratings given by participants to the training speakers and the training as a whole through survey questionnaires indicating the participant’s level of satisfaction with the conducted training. The system was initiated in government institutions and will subsequently be used in educational institutions such as schools and training institutions. The purpose of the study was therefore to describe the effectiveness of the Web-Based Training and Evaluation Systems in identifying, analyzing, and measuring the level of satisfaction of each training and seminar conducted. A K-means algorithm was used to build the system, wherein the data gathered will be clustered and stored in a repository, and the data will be displayed on the system dashboard to give insight into the overall training process and help determine the effectiveness of the training program and the speakers. Precisely, the research study was focused on the level of satisfaction in the aspects of: Functionality, Reliability and Usability which are three of the subsections of the Software Quality Standards defined in ISO/IEC 9126, an international standard for the evaluation of software quality. The data were collected using descriptive and developmental methods. Purposive sampling was used, and fifteen (15) training personnel were the participants of the research. The results showed that in terms of the Functionality aspect, the participants’ rating had a weighted mean of 4.43, which was considered highly satisfied, while based on Reliability, the participants were highly satisfied with the system with a weighted mean of 4.27. Meanwhile, in terms of the system’s Usability, the participants were highly satisfied, as their ratings’ weighted mean is 4.53. It was deduced from the collected data using the three indicators’ overall weighted mean of 4.41; thus, the system got a highly satisfactory rating and can be classified as effective for use in the evaluation of the training programs.

Evaluation of Software Quality in Test-driven Development: A Perspective of Measurement and Metrics

A software product is expected to be subjected to critical evaluation on its quality attributes in order to ascertain that target quality requirements are met, and that those quality attributes responsible for revealing software quality are not omitted in the software development process. Software metrics are essential to accomplish the task. This paper has carried out an exploratory study of software measurement and software metrics in tandem. The study took into cognizance the interwoven nature of the duo in measuring and revealing software quality. The study formulated a model that expressed the mutual bonding that propels both measurement and metrics to describing software quality in numeric quantities of software attributes. The study identified six software attributes whose values are considered enough quantities to reveal the quality of a software product. The identification enabled the study to create a model equation aimed at giving a numeric value for the complete evaluation of a software system. The result of the implementation of the six software attributes into the model equation showed that two software products employed in the study are of high-quality, having quality values of 0.93 and 0.86 respectively. The attributes produced values that confirmed the maintainability (25 seconds & 20 seconds respectively) and reliability (0.78 & 0.80 respectively) of both software products among other differing features that characterize them.

Identification and Evaluation of Factors Influencing Software Quality using Pythagorean Fuzzy DEMATEL Approach

One of the recognized techniques for making decisions in ambiguous environment is the fuzzy Decision Making Trialand Evaluation Laboratory [DEMATEL] method. The fuzzy set [FS] and intuitionistic fuzzy set [IFS] conceptsare generalized in the Pythagorean fuzzy set [PFS]. This study focuses on the software quality evaluation problemin software management using the DEMATEL approach with PFS. It is suitable for addressing ambiguous humanjudgments and unclear and inadequate information when choosing the criteria for a software quality review. Themethod discovers cause-and-effect system components while taking into account the independence of the criteriaand provides mutual links among the criteria. Based on information gathered from a group of professionals, theimplemented method is illustrated. Originality: Software quality evaluation is handled first time with Pythagoreanfuzzy set-based DEMATEL approach.

Development and Testing Requirements for an Integrated Maternal and Child Health Information System in Iran: A Design Thinking Case Study.

Management of child health care can be negatively affected by incomplete recording, low data quality, and lack of data integration of health management information systems to support decision making and public health program needs. Given the importance of identifying key determinants of child health via capturing and integrating accurate and high-quality information, we aim to address this gap through the development and testing requirements for an integrated child health information system. A five-phase design thinking approach including empathizing, defining, ideation, prototyping, and testing was applied. We employed observations and interviews with the health workers at the primary health care network to identify end-users' challenges and needs using tools in human-centered design and focus group discussion. Then, a potential solution to the identified problems was developed as an integrated maternal and child health information system (IMCHIS) prototype and tested using Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation Model (SQuaRE) ISO/IEC 25000. IMCHIS was developed as a web-based system with 74 data elements and seven maternal and child health care requirements. The requirements of "child disease" with weight (0.26), "child nutrition" with weight (0.20), and "prenatal care" with weight (0.16) acquired the maximum weight coefficient. In the testing phase, the highest score with the weight coefficient of 0.48 and 0.73 was attributed to efficiency and functionality characteristics, focusing on software capability to fulfill the tasks that meet users' needs. Implementing a successful child health care system integrates both maternal and child health care information systems to track the effect of maternal conditions on child health and support managing performance and optimizing service delivery. The highest quality score of IMCHIS in efficiency and functionality characteristics confirms that it owns the capability to identify key determinants of child health.

A Novel Trustworthiness Measurement Model Based on Weight and User Feedback

Software trustworthiness is an essential criterion for evaluating software quality. In component-based software, different components play different roles and different users give different grades of trustworthiness after using the software. The two elements will both affect the trustworthiness of software. When the software quality is evaluated comprehensively, it is necessary to consider the weight of component and user feedback. According to different construction of components, the different trustworthiness measurement models are established based on the weight of components and user feedback. Algorithms of these trustworthiness measurement models are designed in order to obtain the corresponding trustworthiness measurement value automatically. The feasibility of these trustworthiness measurement models is demonstrated by a train ticket purchase system.

Public Health Record Management System: An Up-Close Monitoring System

The researchers developed a public health record management system for the barangay health center of Sto. Rosario, Paombong, Bulacan, recognize the existing problem, circumstances and reduce the risk of data lost due to unprecedented accidents or human errors and decrease the probability of data redundancy for the patients. The developers used an illustrative and user-friendly design that presents the data in the easiest way possible. Public Health Record Management System (PHRMS) aims to elevate the current state of record management of the public health center by incorporating technology to further enhance the productivity securely and a faster way of data processing to save time and serve more patients. For the acceptability of the developed health information system, the researchers consulted with IT professionals from different fields, IT instructors from Bulacan State University, and the endusers or clients of the developed system such as the midwife, and barangay health workers. The evaluation form has the following criteria for software quality evaluation as follows: (1) functional suitability; (2) performance efficiency; (3) usability; (4) reliability; (5) security; and (6) portability.

Assisting Personalized Healthcare of Elderly People: Developing a Rule-Based Virtual Caregiver System Using Mobile Chatbot.

To assist personalized healthcare of elderly people, our interest is to develop a virtual caregiver system that retrieves the expression of mental and physical health states through human–computer interaction in the form of dialogue. The purpose of this paper is to implement and evaluate a virtual caregiver system using mobile chatbot. Unlike the conventional health monitoring approach, our key idea is to integrate a rule-based virtual caregiver system (called “Mind Monitoring” service) with the physical, mental, and social questionnaires into the mobile chat application. The elderly person receives one question from the mobile chatbot per day, and answers it by pushing the optional button or using a speech recognition technique. Furthermore, a novel method is implemented to quantify the answers, generate visual graphs, and send the corresponding summaries or advice to the specific elder. In the experimental evaluation, we applied it to eight elderly subjects and 19 younger subjects within 14 months. As main results, its effects were significantly improved by the proposed method, including the above 80% in the response rate, the accurate reflection of their real lives from the responses, and high usefulness of the feedback messages with software quality requirements and evaluation. We also conducted interviews with subjects for health analysis and improvement.

Development and application of an online learning platform for nursing ethics: A teaching practice research

BackgroundIt is crucial to diversify the methods for clinical nurses to continue learning nursing ethics in that ethical decision-making ability in nursing is regarded as one of the core competencies in nursing practice. ObjectiveIn response to nurses' learning needs for nursing ethics, this study built an online learning platform for the pertinent topic, and tested its effect on improving nurses' ethical decision-making ability and critical thinking ability. DesignA qualitative method was adopted to develop interventions, which were designed as a teaching practice research consisting of a study group and a control group. ParticipantsA total of 93 nurses, including 20 interviewees and 30 in the study group and 43 in the control group. MethodQualitative methods were employed to understand the learning needs of nurses. The judgment about nursing decisions and the critical thinking disposition inventory, learning effectiveness questionnaire and learning software quality evaluation scale were used as research tools in this teaching practice research. The SPSS 25.0 was adopted to analyze data by paired sample t-test and independent sample t-test. ResultsIn the measurement of the judgment about nursing decisions scale, the study group scored higher than the control group. The critical thinking disposition inventory scale identified a similar result in the total score incorporating the four dimensions, including analyticity, systematicity, critical thinking self-confidence, inquisitiveness. There is a correlation between learning software quality and learning effect, with a correlation coefficient of 0.640. ConclusionThe online learning platform of nursing ethics built in this study has positive learning effects, and it demonstrates effectiveness to improve nurses' abilities in nursing ethics, decision-making and critical thinking. It is expected to be a viable way to improve the continuity of nurses' study of ethics.

MaLTeSQuE 2021 Workshop Summary

The 5th edition of the Machine Learning Techniques for Software Quality Evaluation (MaLTeSQuE 2021) workshop was held virtually (originally in Athens, Greece) on August 23rd, 2021, colocated with the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE 2021). MaLTeSQuE received a total of ten submissions from all over the world, from which six papers and three abstracts were included in the program. The program also featured a keynote by Tim Menzies on the future of machine learning techniques for software quality. This report summarizes the event and insights stemmed from the keynote and presentations in the three sessions of the workshop.

PROCEDURE FOR DEBUGGING REPLICA CLASS ERRORS IN RULE-ORIENTED KNOWLEDGE BASES

The problems of error detection by experts in the rule-oriented knowledge bases of oriented information systems, which occurring at the stage of the knowledge base formation, are considered. It has been determined that such errors are associated with the contradictory opinions of experts and / or the limited (imperfect) description of the subject area. The approaches to their debugging were analyzed. The ways of improving the existing approaches to debugging static errors of the “replica” class and possible ways of applying the obtained solutions to eliminate errors “contradictoriness”, “redundancy”, “incompleteness” have been shown. Considering the requirements for the accuracy of information presentation, the solutions for expanding the content of the definition of the static error of the rule-oriented knowledge base have been proposed. The issues of the influence of the "replica" class errors on the results of output in accordance with the rules of the rule-oriented knowledge base were considered. The possibility of using graph theory methods for solving the problem of debugging errors of the "replica" class has been proved. The algorithmic structures for identifying and debugging errors of the specified class, which in contrast to existing solutions allow to identify duplicate apexes at each rank of the graph to which the rule-oriented knowledge base is amounted to, have been developed. A software implementation of detecting and debugging static errors of incomplete, fragmentary and complete duplication has been developed. Due to usage of recursion, the requirements for preparing an array of input data for processing were reduced. The solutions obtained are compatible with the requirements of DSTU ISO / IEC 9126, DSTU ISO / IEC 14598 and consider the requirements of the Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation family of standards as the value of the apexes of the event tree graph. In the process of solving the problem, the specifics of the functioning of the man-machine system was considered. In particular, the possibility of formalizing various aspects of knowledge (alethic, dissisional, casual, dianistic) and assurance of a given level of operativeness in finding solutions has been accounted.

Software Quality Evaluation by Cocomo II With NN and SVM

Cost, time and quality projection are the crucial aspects in software development process. Incorrect estimations can cause losses which in turn may lead to irreversible damage. It is generally perceived that a imperfectly estimated project always results in a substandard quality due to the efforts being wrongly directed. Firstly Effort Estimation is calculated by actual effort and proposed Effort. That Effort evaluation of 500 NASA projects, after that evaluation is done by four parameters Standard Error, Standard Deviation, Mean Absolute Error, Root Mean Square Error. The author amalgamated the robustness of COCOMO-II with that of Neural Network NN and Support Vector Machine SVM .Quality Which we evaluate that is quality Evaluation of Semantic Web Application. In the last checks the majority of all four parameters for software quality assessment.

Construction of Similarity Measure for Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and its Application in Face Recognition and Software Quality Evaluation

Construction of Similarity Measure for Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets and its Application in Face Recognition and Software Quality Evaluation

User Experience Dimensions for E-procurement

The use of e-procurement is needed for business transactions, especially regarding procurement activities. However, system users always demand and expect to use the system without problems. Existing studies on e-procurement do not focus on user experience (UX). Only a few studies have identified dimensions for UX evaluation; however, they are for e-government online services and construction. Identifying the UX dimensions for e-procurement is important for measuring user experience to provide better services. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate and determine the dimensions of user experience for e-procurement. The method for selecting articles was adopted from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). The study analysed the data using thematic analysis based on the Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) standards, such as ISO 25022:2016 and ISO 25023:2016, as guidance. The findings showed that among the most used UX dimensions in the e-procurement literature were satisfaction, security, transparency, efficiency, and reliability. Other UX-related dimensions identified from the review were usability, compatibility, effectiveness, performance efficiency, functional suitability, attractiveness, explainability, fairness, and visibility. The study was conducted to identify the UX dimensions for e-procurement from literature studies by organising them using ISO 25022:2016 and ISO 25023:2016 standards. This study could serve as a guideline for designers, developers, and researchers to develop an e-procurement system by referring to the proposed UX dimensions to produce a positive user experience. Moreover, the findings are beneficial to practitioners on software quality attributes.

Economic effect of software quality evaluation procedure in small IT businesses

IT industry is growing fast from year to year, which leads to growing competition in the respective market. That is why quality evaluation best practices are becoming more widely appreciated. Relevance of the chosen theme results from the fact that appropriate quality evaluation process is required to make a competitive product in the IT industry. The intention of this paper is to suggest a software quality evaluation procedure for small IT businesses. This market segment does not have a formalized basis for comprehensive quality evaluation. The designed procedure includes five steps: describing a software product, selection of key quality measures of the software product and its source code, selection of appropriate methods for measuring, quality evaluation according to the key measures and calculation source code quality metrics, quality rate calculation. The importance of high-quality source code has been demonstrated by a chart which shows a dependency of total implemented functionality from time in two cases: high-quality source code and low-quality source code. As a conclusion, it is claimed that introduction of quality evaluation procedure does not lead to material costs increase, which is highly important for small IT businesses. There is economic effect analysis of introduction of software quality evaluation procedure in small IT businesses.

Rethinking real property assessment and tax management system through an interoperable e-government framework

Real property taxation is the major revenue source of local government units (LGUs). However, studies in local finance reported a poor revenue performance on real property collection encumbered by systematic problems, such as outdated valuation standards, lengthy process, and the absence of a centralised electronic database. The difficulties identified are addressed in this paper by redesigning the process through an interoperable real property assessment and tax management system (RPaTS) categorised into three modules. The development of RPaTS adapted the project methodology of Princeton University, and was submitted for software quality evaluation using quantitative methods based on ISO 9126 metrics. The evaluation results show that RPaTS optimised the process by almost 200% or shorten the processing time for a single transaction from 95 to 30 minutes. The respondents also commended its automation feature particularly in updating the schedule of market values (SMV). Overall, end-users gave an average 4.42 Likert score rating.

Embedded Software Quality Evaluation Based on BP Neural Network and Causal Inference

Embedded Software Quality Evaluation Based on BP Neural Network and Causal Inference