Customize Your Quality Analysis – Enjoy the Freedom

Sept. 10, 2016

Tags: Custom thresholds , Tool for empirical studies , Custom analysis , Metrics thresholds , Custom quality analysis



Every piece of code is different in terms of domain, context, and its quality requirements. Measuring quality aspects of all the software systems using the same stick is not appropriate and often not desirable. Keeping it in mind, Designite has introduced a new feature “Preferences” in version 1.33.0 to allow users to customize their analysis by selecting thresholds based on their context and requirements.

Metric threshold customization

You can now select one of the metric threshold profiles. Designite offers four such profiles – StandardStringentLenient, and Custom. As the name suggests, Standard profile is the default option with balanced metric thresholds. By selecting Stringent, you can enable stricter metric thresholds. Similarly, Lenient profile imposes lenient metric thresholds. If none of these profiles suits your needs, you can choose Custom profile and change any metric to your desired value.

Customize Your Quality Analysis
Customize Your Quality Analysis

Customize Smell Detection

You can completely customize the design and implementation smell detection in Designite. You can enable/disable smells i.e. whether you want Designite to detect specific smells or not. In many cases, there are multiple thresholds associated with a smell. You can change the threshold values based on your requirements. Certain threshold values are fixed (for example, “number of methods” in the case of Imperative Abstraction which is intentional to preserve the essence of the smell).

Preferences - customize your smell analysis
Preferences – customize your smell analysis

If you see an error something like the following, then either you need to execute the tool with administrative privileges or manually change the configuration files.

Error
Possible error message that you may encounter while changing preferences

Custom Analysis using Console Application

If you are using Designite’s console application, you can specify your desired threshold settings very easily.

For metric profile and threshold values, open “MetricThreshold.config” file in the installation folder of Designite (if the file doesn’t exist, create one). Put the following line in the file:

MetricThresholdProfile=STRINGENT

If you want to change the profile to Lenient, put “LENIENT” instead of “STRINGENT”.
In case, you wish to customize one or more threshold values, your file may look like as follows:

MetricThresholdProfile=CUSTOM
CC=7
LOC=500
DIT=4
FANIN=15
FANOUT=15
LCOM=0.9
MLOC=60
NC=7
NOF=10
NOM=20
NOP=10
NOPF=1
NOPM=10
PC=4
WMC=60

Similarly, to customize your smell analysis, open “SmellThreshold.config” in the installation folder of Designite. Create the file if it doesn’t exist. Paste the following contents in the file:

UNNECESSARY ABSTRACTION=NO,5
IMPERATIVE ABSTRACTION=NO,100
MULTIFACETED ABSTRACTION=NO,0.6,10,10
UNUTILIZED ABSTRACTION=YES
DUPLICATE ABSTRACTION=YES,20
DEFICIENT ENCAPSULATION=YES,1,1
UNEXPLOITED ENCAPSULATION=YES,2
BROKEN MODULARIZATION=YES,5
INSUFFICIENT MODULARIZATION=YES,20,30,100
HUB-LIKE MODULARIZATION=YES,20,20
CYCLICALLY-DEPENDENT MODULARIZATION=NO
WIDE HIERARCHY=YES,10
DEEP HIERARCHY=YES,6
MULTIPATH HIERARCHY=YES
CYCLIC HIERARCHY=YES
REBELLIOUS HIERARCHY=YES
UNFACTORED HIERARCHY=YES
MISSING HIERARCHY=YES,2
BROKEN HIERARCHY=YES
LONG METHOD=YES,100
COMPLEX METHOD=YES,8
LONG PARAMETER LIST=YES,5
LONG IDENTIFIER=YES,30
LONG STATEMENT=NO,120
COMPLEX CONDITIONAL=YES,3
VIRTUAL CALL FROM CONSTRUCTOR=YES
EMPTY CATCH BLOCK=YES
MAGIC NUMBER=YES
DUPLICATE CODE=YES
MISSING DEFAULT=YES

Each line contains the information about one smell. At the minimum, each line contains whether the smell will be detected by the tool (obviously, yes means the tool will look for the smell). A smell may have zero or more threshold values; the number of thresholds depends on the smell. You can change the threshold values based on your requirements. Please note that the order of the smells can be changed; thus, Multifaceted Abstraction can come first and Unnecessary Abstraction can appear in the last line.

Here is the table that summarizes the customizable thresholds for each smell.

Smells Threshold Values
UNNECESSARY ABSTRACTION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Max no of fields + properties

IMPERATIVE ABSTRACTION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min LOC

MULTIFACETED ABSTRACTION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min LOC

Min no of fields

Min no of methods

UNUTILIZED ABSTRACTION Enable analysis – YES/NO
DUPLICATE ABSTRACTION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min consecutive duplicated lines

DEFICIENT ENCAPSULATION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of public fields

Min no of public static fields

UNEXPLOITED ENCAPSULATION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of typechecks belonging to same hierarchy

BROKEN MODULARIZATION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of fields + properties

INSUFFICIENT MODULARIZATION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of public methods

Min no of all methods

Min WMC

HUB-LIKE MODULARIZATION Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min Fan-in

Min Fan-out

CYCLICALLY-DEPENDENT MODULARIZATION Enable analysis – YES/NO
WIDE HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of subtypes

DEEP HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min DIT

MULTIPATH HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO
CYCLIC HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO
REBELLIOUS HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO
UNFACTORED HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO
MISSING HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of typechecks

BROKEN HIERARCHY Enable analysis – YES/NO
LONG METHOD Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min method LOC

COMPLEX METHOD Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min CC

LONG PARAMETER LIST Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min parameter count

LONG IDENTIFIER Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min identifier length

LONG STATEMENT Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min statement length

COMPLEX CONDITIONAL Enable analysis – YES/NO

Min no of conditionals

VIRTUAL CALL FROM CONSTRUCTOR Enable analysis – YES/NO
EMPTY CATCH BLOCK Enable analysis – YES/NO
MAGIC NUMBER Enable analysis – YES/NO
DUPLICATE CODE Enable analysis – YES/NO
MISSING DEFAULT Enable analysis – YES/NO