Software Quality Requirements And Evaluation Research Articles

A fuzzy logic-based quality model for identifying microservices with low maintainability

Microservice Architecture (MSA) is a popular architectural style that offers many advantages regarding quality attributes, including maintainability and scalability. Developing a system as a set of microservices with expected benefits requires a quality assessment strategy that is established on the measurements of the system's properties. This paper proposes a hierarchical quality model based on fuzzy logic to measure and evaluate the maintainability of MSAs considering ISO/IEC 250xy SQuaRE (System and Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation) standards. Since the qualitative bounds of low-level quality attributes are inherently ambiguous, we use a fuzzification technique to transform crisp values of code metrics into fuzzy levels and apply them as inputs to our quality model. The model generates fuzzy values for the quality sub-characteristics of the maintainability, i.e., modifiability and testability, converted to numerical values through defuzzification. In the last step, using the values of the sub-characteristics, we calculate numerical scores indicating the maintainability level of each microservice in the examined software system. This score was used to assess the quality of the microservices and decide whether they need refactoring. We evaluated our approach by creating a test set with the assistance of three developers, who reviewed and categorized the maintainability levels of the microservices in an open-source project based on their knowledge and experience. They labeled microservices as low, medium, or high, with low indicating the need for refactoring. Our method for identifying low-labeled microservices in the given test set achieved 94% accuracy, 78% precision, and 100% recall. These results indicate that our approach can assist designers in evaluating the maintainability quality of microservices.

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.

Measurement of software quality based on international standards

Quality is one of the factors that ensure the commercial success and safety of using the software. Quality is understood as conformity the explicit and implicit requirements of various stakeholders. It is necessary to ensure a joint understanding between developers and users, engineers need to understand the meaning of the concept of quality, characteristics and importance of quality for the developed or maintained software. Measurements are the basis for quality assurance. They are the main tool for managing the life cycle of software products, assessing the implementation of plans and monitoring. To quantify quality, it is necessary to measure the characteristics of the software. Standardization provides unification of requirements for quality, its measurement and assessment. The use of standards has many potential benefits for any organization, especially in key areas such as measuring the quality of software products, information and measurement systems. Recognized international standards organizations have published the ISO/IEC 25000 series of standards for systems and software quality requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE), which is gaining widespread practical application. The paper discusses a series of the SQuaRE international standards, analyzes the relationship between the quality model, quality characteristics, quality measures and a new concept, i.e., a quality measure element of the software, presents the measurement of quality based on these standards.

Evaluate and control service and transaction dependability of complex IoT systems

Observing and controlling the dependability of service provision of complex IoT systems is challenging. In practice, many organizations struggle to derive consumer needs related to quality and to observe and quantify the service provision in the context of the dynamic behavior of a complex distributed system. In this paper, we present an approach to define and evaluate the dependability of complex IoT systems. Our approach is an adaptation of the ISO/IEC 25040, an international standard for the evaluation process for system and software quality, which is part of the systems and software quality requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE) series. Our approach was designed and evaluated with action research in an industrial study at Robert Bosch GmbH. Based on the framework of the SQuaRE series, we integrated different elements of site reliability engineering (SRE) and combined them with distributed tracing as a promising measurement method. Our approach introduces the IoT transaction concept to reduce modeling and observation efforts while increasing operationalization to measure performance against dependability targets. Our adaption was effectively applied, consumer-centricity along different system stakeholders were enhanced, and negative consequences of organizational silos were reduced. This has improved the dependability evaluation of service provision to enable fast feedback cycles for service performance control and improvement.

Online Support Management System for University of Antique

This paper discussed the development of an Online Support Management System to have a centralized system to support the information technology needs of every department of the University of Antique, in effect, to support the needs of the students. The system was developed using the modified Software Development Life Cycle Waterfall Model using six phases – Conceptualization, Technical Feasibility, Development, Pilot Testing, Creation of User’s manual, and Evaluation of Online Support Management System. Each phase must be completed before the next phase can begin and there is no overlapping in the phases. The researcher anchors the study on Research and Development (R&D) which aims to create a new body of knowledge about existing products or processes, or the creation of an entirely new product. Unstructured interviews, document analysis, and modified survey-questionnaire adapted from ISO/IEC 25010: 2011 Systems and Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) - System and software quality models had been conducted for data collection. The findings showed that three groups of the respondents were satisfied with the features and capabilities of the Online Support Management System and complied with the requirements or specifications based on ISO/IEC 25010: 2011 standards. Though the respondents are satisfied with their evaluation of the developed Online Support Management System, the result revealed that there was a significant difference noted in the evaluations of the respondents. This result implies that the evaluation made by the three groups of respondents significantly differs from one another in terms of functional suitability, performance efficiency, compatibility, usability, reliability, security, and maintainability.

ПІДХОДИ ЩОДО ОЦІНЮВАННЯ ЯКОСТІ СПЕЦІАЛЬНОГО ПРОГРАМНОГО ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ НА ПРИКЛАДІ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНИХ СИСТЕМ, ПРИЗНАЧЕНИХ ДЛЯ ПІДВИЩЕННЯ ЕФЕКТИВНОСТІ УПРАВЛІННЯ

У статті розкриваються погляди на методологію та порядок оцінювання спеціального програмного забезпечення з урахуванням вимог Національних стандартів України ДСТУ ISO/ІЕС 25010:2016 (ISO/ІЕС 25010:2011, IDT). “Інженерія систем і програмних засобів. Вимоги до якості систем і програмних засобів та її оцінювання. Моделі якості системи та програмних засобівˮ та ДСТУ ІS0/ІЕС 9126-1:2013 (ІS0/ІЕС 9126 1:2001, IDТ). “Програмна інженерія. Якість продукту. Частина 1. Модель якостіˮ.
 Як приклад розглядається перевірка якості спеціального програмного забезпечення для управління військами.

Consistency of Open Data as Prerequisite for Usability in Agriculture

Abstract Benefits of open data are diverse and range from improved efficiency of public administrations, economic growth in the private sector. Agriculture is also an inseparable part of the private sector. These data can stimulate economic growth. Economy can benefit from an easier access to information, content and knowledge in turn contributing to the development of innovative services and creation of new business models (European Data Portal, 2016). The prerequisite of this stimulation is consistency of open data. Both of these features have to be a part of these data quality. However, this aspect of open data quality has not yet been satisfactorily resolved in the framework of international standardization of quality (Systems and Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE)). The issue of possible evaluation of open data consistency in agriculture is discussed. Results suggest that open data consistency may be achieved by consistent application of the technique of data normalization of relevant data sets. Consistent application of data normalization technique of open data sets can reduce the risk of inconsistency of the open data. That is the only way to guarantee that the open data will be the benefit to private sector.

Software quality requirements

At the present time, the international standards and technical reports for system and software product quality are dispersed in several series of normative documents (ISO/IEC 9126, ISO/IEC 14598, ISO/IEC 12119 etc.). These documents are not purely consistent and do not contain a tools for exact requirements set-ups. As quality is defined as a degree to which the set of inherent characteristic fulfils requirements, the exact requirement formulation is the key point for the quality measurement evaluation. This paper presents the framework for quality requirements for software, which is recommendable to use in the new international standard series ISO/IEC 250xx developed on the SQuaRE (Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation) standardisation research project. The main part of this contribution was presented on the conference Agrarian Perspectives XIV, organised by the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague, September 20 to 21, 2005.

Software and data quality

The paper presents new ideas in the International SQuaRE (Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation) standardisation research project, which concerns the development of a special branch of international standards for software quality. Data can be considered as an integral part of software. The current international standard and technical report of the ISO/IEC 9126, ISO/IEC 14598 series and ISO/IEC 12119 standard covert the whole software as an indivisible entity. However, such data sets as databases and data stores have a special character and need a different structure of quality characteristic. Therefore it was decided in the SQuaRE project create a special international standard for data quality. The main idea for this standard and the critical discussion of these ideas is presented in this paper. The main part of this contribution was presented on the conference Agricultural Perspectives XIV, aligned by Czech University of Agriculture in Prague, September 20 to 21, 2005.