Assessing Internal Software Quality Attributes of the Object-Oriented and Service-Oriented Software Development Paradigms: A Comparative Study

Yaser I. Mansour, Suleiman H. Mustafa

.

DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2011.44027                

Abstract

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming the dominant approach for developing and organizing distributed enterprise-wide applications. Although the concepts of SOA have been extensively described in the literature and in-dustry, the effects of adopting SOA on software quality are still unclear. The aim of the paper is to analyze how adopt-ing SOA can affect software quality as opposed to the Object-Oriented (OO) paradigm and expose the differential implications of adopting both paradigms on software quality. The paper provides a brief introduction of the architectural differences between the Service-Oriented (SO) and OO paradigms and a description of internal software quality metrics used for the comparison. The effects and differences are exposed by providing a case study architected for both paradigms. The quantitative measure concluded in the paper showed that a software system developed using SOA approach provides higher reusability and lower coupling among software modules, but at the same time higher complexity than those of the OO approach. It was also found that some of the existing OO software quality metrics are inapplicable to SOA software systems. As a consequence, new metrics need to be developed specifically to SOA software systems.

Keywords

Service-Oriented Architecture, Object-Orientation, Internal Software Quality Attributes, Software Quality Metrics

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	T. Erl, “Services-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design,” Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2005.
[2]	Z. Stojanovic and A. Dahanayake, “Service-Oriented Software System Engineering: Challenges and Practices,” Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, 2005.
[3]	A. Arsanjani, “Service-Oriented Modeling and Architecture: How to Identify, Specify, and Realize your SOA,” Whitepaper, IBM Corporation, November 2004. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/libraary/ws-soa-design1/
[4]	T. Erl, “Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services,” Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2004.
[5]	O. Zimmermann, P. Krogdahl and C. Gee, “Elements of Service-Oriented Analysis and Design,” Developer Works, IBM Corporation, 2004.
[6]	G. Booch, “IBM’s Grady Booch on Solving Software Complexity,” InfoWorld Interview, 2004. http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/02/02/HNboochint_1.html
[7]	Deitel & Deitel, “Visual C# 2005: How to Program,” 2nd Edition, Deitel & Associates, Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, 2006.
[8]	M. Barbacci, “Software Quality Attributes and Architecture Tradeoffs,” Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, 2003.
[9]	F. Losavio, L. Chirinos, N. Levy and A. Ramadane-Che- rif, “Quality Characteristics for Software Architecture,” Journal of Object Technology, Vol. 2, No. 2, March-April 2003, pp. 133-150. doi:10.5381/jot.2003.2.2.a2
[10]	F. B. Abreu and W. Melo, “Evaluating the Impact of Object-Oriented Design on Software Quality,” Proceedings of the 3rd International Software Metrics Symposium, Berlin, March 1996, pp. 90-99. doi:10.1109/METRIC.1996.492446
[11]	N. P. Capper, R. J. Colgate, J. C. Hunter and M. F. James, “The Impact of Object-Oriented Technology on Software Quality: Three Case Histories,” IBM Systems Journal, IBM, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1996, pp. 131-157.
[12]	L. Briand, J. Wust and H. Lounis, “Investigating Quality Factors in Object-Oriented Designs: An Industrial Case Study,” ICSE’99 Proceedings of the 21st international conference on Software engineering, New York, 1999.
[13]	M. Haines, “The Impact of Service-Oriented Application Development on Software Development Methodology,” Proceeding of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, January 2007, pp.172b.
[14]	M. Perepletchikov, C. Ryan and K. Frampton, “Comparing the Impact of Service-Oriented and Object-Oriented Paradigms on the Structural Properties of Software,” Second International Workshop on Modeling Inter-Or- ganizational Systems, Cyprus, Vol. 3762, 2005, pp. 431-441.
[15]	M. Perepletchikov, C. Ryan and Z. Tari, “The Impact of Software Development Strategies on Project and Structural Software Attributes in SOA,” Proceedings of the 2nd INTEROP Network of Excellence Dissemination Workshop, Cyprus, 31 October -4 November 2005.
[16]	C. Kaner and W. Pond, “Software Engineering Metrics: What Do They Measure and How Do We Know?” 10th International Software Metrics Symposium METRICS, Chicago, 11-17 September 2004.
[17]	L. Laird and C. Brennan, “Software Measurement and Estimation: A Practical Approach,” IEEE Computer Society, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2006.
[18]	T. McCabe and A. Watson, “Software Complexity,” Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 1994. http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1994/12/xt94d12b.asp
[19]	M. Halstead, “Elements of Software Science,” Elsevier North-Holland, Inc., New York, 1977.
[20]	K. Welker and P. Oman, “Software Maintainability Metrics Models in Practice,” Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 1995. http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1995/11/maintain.asp
[21]	S. Chidamber and C. Kemerer, “A Metrics Suite for Object Oriented Design,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 20, No. 6, June 1994.
[22]	V. Basili, L. Briand and W. Melo, “A Validation of Object-Oriented Design Metrics as Quality Indicators,” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 22, No. 10, October 1996.
[23]	L. Briand, J. Daly, V. Porter and J. Wust, “A Comprehensive Empirical Validation of Product Measures for Object-Oriented Systems,” Fraunhofer Institute of Experimental Software Engineering, Kaiserslautern, 1998.
[24]	Ariadne Training, “UML Applied-Object Oriented Analysis and Design,” 2nd Edition, Ariadne Training Limited, UK, 2005.
[25]	W. Bentley, “System Analysis & Design Methods,” 7th Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2007.
[26]	P. Kruchten, “The Rational Unified Process: An Introduction,” 3rd Edition, Addison-Wesley, Boston, 2003.
[27]	Microsoft, “Introducing the Web Service Software Factory,” Microsoft Corporation, 2006. http://www.msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480534.aspx
[28]	M. Endrei, J. Ang, A. Arsanjani, S. Chua, P. Comte, P. Krogdahl, M. Luo and T. Newling, “Patterns: Service- Oriented Architecture and Web Services,” IBM Redbooks, IBM Corporation, 2004.