Title: Measuring the functional size of web applications

Authors: Silvia Abrahao, Oscar Pastor

Addresses: Department of Information Systems and Computation, Valencia University of Technology, Camino de Vera s/n, 46071 Valencia, Spain. Department of Information Systems and Computation, Valencia University of Technology, Camino de Vera s/n, 46071 Valencia, Spain

Abstract: Today, more and more Web sites and Applications (WebApps) are becoming mission-critical systems. Measures of functional size are a prerequisite to successful quantitative management of software projects. However, the nature of the web has recently imposed new and challenging characteristics, which are not supported by the existing estimation metric and models. In order to avoid the Web crisis, we urge the use of web engineering approaches for developing and estimating web projects in a systematic way. To achieve this goal, we present a novel size metric for accurately measuring the functional size of web applications early in the development life cycle. The main contribution of this work is the introduction of a measurement process that is embedded in the conceptual modelling phase of a model-driven approach for developing web applications. The results obtained from our experiments with this approach are outlined in this work.

Keywords: web engineering; conceptual modelling; object-oriented; web metrics; function points; functional size measurement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWET.2003.003265

International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, 2003 Vol.1 No.1, pp.5 - 16

Published online: 07 Aug 2003 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article