software metric

software metric [¦sȯf‚wer ′me·trik]

(computer science)

A rule for quantifying some characteristic or attribute of a computer software entity.

One of a set of techniques whose aim is to measure the quality of a computer program.

---

Software metric

A rule for quantifying some characteristic or attribute of a computer software entity. For example, a simple one is the FileSize metric, which is the total number of characters in the source files of a program. The FileSize metric can be used to determine the measure of a particular program, such as 3K bytes. It provides a concrete measure of the abstract attribute of program size. Other metrics can be used for software entities such as requirements documents, design object models, or database structure models. Metrics for requirements and design documents can be used to guide decisions about development and as a basis for predictions, such as for cost and effort. Metrics for programs can be used to support decisions about testing and maintenance and as a basis for comparing different versions of programs. Ideally, metrics for the development cost of software and for the quality of the resultant program are desirable. See Computer programming, Software engineering

---

(programming)

software metric - A measure of software quality which indicates the complexity, understandability, testability, description and intricacy of code.