A Comparative Case Study on Tools for Internal Software Quality Measures

Abstract

Internal software quality is measured using quality metrics, which are implemented in static software analysis tools. There is no current research on which tool is the best suited to improve internal software quality, i.e. implements scientifically validated metrics, has sufficient features and consistent measurement results. The approach to solve this problem was to find academic papers that have validated software metrics and then find tools that support these metrics, additionally these tools were evaluated for consistency of results and other user relevant characteristics. An evaluation of the criteria above resulted in a recommendation for the Java/C/C++ tool Understand and the C/C++ tool QAC.