Software Design Quality Metrics for Web Based Systems

Abstract

Today, the internet and the World Wide Web are the most amazing and dynamically growing computer technologies. With the growth of World Wide Web (WWW) the number of Web Based Hypermedia Applications (WBHAs) has also increased at a tremendous rate. A quality application can be produced only through a quality design. For a quality design it is necessary that all its aspects should be measured at the design phase. . The existing metrics only cater the aspects of software applications after implementation phase. Many methodologies have been proposed for the web applications design and development. These methodologies do not cover the issues related to security. OODM was also proposed with the objectives of web application development but the security issues were also not covered in this methodology. Furthermore there are no measurements for the design schema and its different models in OODM. Other methodologies are also without this feature. A methodology for the design of a web application has been proposed in this dissertation. Secure Object oriented design methodology (S-OODM) is an extension of the OODM in which security issue has been incorporated in the analysis and design. Metrics for overall design schema and all its models have been proposed and validated through a case study of university web site. The case study shows that application with security constraints can be developed by using this methodology and validation of one design or comparison of different design can be carried out through these metrics. The designer can design a quality ixdesign through these metrics and can improve its quality without going on the next phase. Using these metrics the complexity of the design can be reduced. The performance of the design can be measured and hence can be increased. The valuable resources like cost, time and space can be measured and thus can be saved by using the proposed metrics. Navigational time is another feature of the web applications that can be measured and thus the easiest navigational path can be computed by using these metrics. User interaction is important in the web applications and this is also achieved by using the proposed metrics. The metrics provides valuable information about the vital components from the security point of view which help the designer to give a care full attention to the vital components. The methodology, OODM/S-OODM, is believed one of first web application development methodologies. It provides a complete, detailed and step-wise development process. Therefore, it needs to be automated. Work in this direction can be done. There can be another future direction of this work can be to upgrade this methodology (S-OODM) for the development of semantic web applications. It can further be extended for the sub domains as at present it deals with the domains only.