COSMIC Solver: A Tool for Functional Sizing of Java Business Applications

Abstract

Functional Size Measurement (FSM) provides aground during software project life-cycle to estimate planningparameters and track progress. Since it is time-consuming, costly,and error-prone when functional size is measured manually,automating the process of measurement has come to the fore. Theliterature includes studies that automate FSM from softwareartifacts such as requirements specifications, design models, andsoftware code. In this study we focus on automation of FSM fromsoftware code, and share our experience towards developing a toolcalled ‘COSMIC Solver’ for COSMIC FSM of Java BusinessApplications (JBAs). The tool automates the following steps: (i)Eliciting textual representations of UML sequence diagrams fromfunctional execution traces of a JBA, (ii) tagging of these textualrepresentations with the help of AspectJ technology to measureCOSMIC functional size, and (iii) calculating functional size ofuser scenarios run in the JBA from the information on the tagsaccording to COSMIC FSM rules. In this paper we explainfeatures and measurement method of COSMIC Solver (v1.0), andthe share results obtained from functional sizing of an open sourceJBA by using the tool.