In computer programming and software design, code refactoring is the process of restructuring existing computer code—changing the factoring—without changing its external behavior. Refactoring is intended to improve the design, structure, and/or implementation of the software, while preserving its functionality. Potential advantages of refactoring may include improved code readability and reduced complexity; these can improve the source code's maintainability and create a simpler, cleaner, or more expressive internal architecture or object model to improve extensibility. Another potential goal for refactoring is improved performance; software engineers face an ongoing challenge to write programs that perform faster or use less memory.
In mathematics, computer science and especially graph theory, a distance matrix is a square matrix containing the distances, taken pairwise, between the elements of a set. Depending upon the application involved, the distance being used to define this matrix may or may not be a metric. If there are N elements, this matrix will have size N×N. In graph-theoretic applications, the elements are more often referred to as points, nodes or vertices.
Cyclomatic complexity is a software metric used to indicate the complexity of a program. It is a quantitative measure of the number of linearly independent paths through a program's source code. It was developed by Thomas J. McCabe, Sr. in 1976.
In the context of software engineering, software quality refers to two related but distinct notions:
In graph theory, a branch of mathematics, the circuit rank, cyclomatic number, cycle rank, or nullity of an undirected graph is the minimum number of edges that must be removed from the graph to break all its cycles, making it into a tree or forest. It is equal to the number of independent cycles in the graph. Unlike the corresponding feedback arc set problem for directed graphs, the circuit rank r is easily computed using the formula
Programming complexity is a term that includes software properties that affect internal interactions. Several commentators distinguish between the terms "complex" and "complicated". Complicated implies being difficult to understand, but ultimately knowable. Complex, by contrast, describes the interactions between entities. As the number of entities increases, the number of interactions between them increases exponentially, making it impossible to know and understand them all. Similarly, higher levels of complexity in software increase the risk of unintentionally interfering with interactions, thus increasing the risk of introducing defects when changing the software. In more extreme cases, it can make modifying the software virtually impossible.
Software visualization or software visualisation refers to the visualization of information of and related to software systems—either the architecture of its source code or metrics of their runtime behavior—and their development process by means of static, interactive or animated 2-D or 3-D visual representations of their structure, execution, behavior, and evolution.
A call graph is a control-flow graph, which represents calling relationships between subroutines in a computer program. Each node represents a procedure and each edge (f, g) indicates that procedure f calls procedure g. Thus, a cycle in the graph indicates recursive procedure calls.
Coding conventions are a set of guidelines for a specific programming language that recommend programming style, practices, and methods for each aspect of a program written in that language. These conventions usually cover file organization, indentation, comments, declarations, statements, white space, naming conventions, programming practices, programming principles, programming rules of thumb, architectural best practices, etc. These are guidelines for software structural quality. Software programmers are highly recommended to follow these guidelines to help improve the readability of their source code and make software maintenance easier. Coding conventions are only applicable to the human maintainers and peer reviewers of a software project. Conventions may be formalized in a documented set of rules that an entire team or company follows, or may be as informal as the habitual coding practices of an individual. Coding conventions are not enforced by compilers.
LDRA Testbed is a set of core static and dynamic analysis engines for both host and embedded software. LDRA Testbed is made by Liverpool Data Research Associates (LDRA). LDRA Testbed provides the means to enforce compliance with coding standards such as MISRA, JSF++ AV, CERT C, CWE and provides visibility of software flaws that might typically pass through the standard build and test process to become latent problems. In addition, test effectiveness feedback is provided through structural coverage analysis reporting facilities, which support the requirements of the DO-178B standard up to and including Level A.
Language Integrated Query is a Microsoft .NET Framework component that adds native data querying capabilities to .NET languages, originally released as a major part of .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007.
NDepend is a static analysis tool for .NET managed code. The tool proposes a large number features, from dependency visualization to Quality Gates and Smart Technical Debt Estimation. For that reasons the community refers to it as the "Swiss Army Knife" for .NET Developers.
LDRA is a provider of software analysis, test, and requirements traceability tools for the Public and Private sectors. It is a pioneer in static and dynamic software analysis.
Polyspace is a static code analysis tool for large-scale analysis by abstract interpretation to detect, or prove the absence of, certain run-time errors in source code for the C, C++, and Ada programming languages. The tool also checks source code for adherence to appropriate code standards.
Moose is a free and open source platform for software and data analysis built in Pharo.
Parasoft C/C++test is an integrated set of tools for testing C and C++ source code that software developers use to analyze, test, find defects, and measure the quality and security of their applications. It supports software development practices that are part of development testing, including static code analysis, dynamic code analysis, unit test case generation and execution, code coverage analysis, regression testing, runtime error detection, requirements traceability, and code review. It's a commercial tool that supports operation on Linux, Windows, and Solaris platforms as well as support for on-target embedded testing and cross compilers.
JArchitect is a static analysis tool for Java code. This tool supports a large number of code metrics, allows for visualization of dependencies using directed graphs and dependency matrix. The tools also performs code base snapshots comparison, and validation of architectural and quality rules. User-defined rules can be written using LINQ queries. This possibility is named CQLinq. The tool also comes with a large number of predefined CQLinq code rules.
SourceMeter is a source code analyzer tool, which can perform deep static program analysis of the source code of complex programs in C, C++, Java, Python, C#, and RPG (AS/400). FrontEndART has developed SourceMeter based on the Columbus technology researched and developed at the Department of Software Engineering of the University of Szeged.
Visual Expert is a static code analysis tool, extracting design and technical information from software source code by reverse-engineering, used by programmers for software maintenance, modernization or optimization.
