An Effort-Based Approach to Measure Completeness of an Entity-Relationship Model

For developing good quality information systems, the need of developing good quality conceptual models cannot be over emphasized. Completeness is an important characteristic that determines the quality of a conceptual model. To measure completeness, metrics called Completeness Index (CI) and Fuzzy Completeness Index (FCI) have been proposed in research. These metrics correspond to the extent functional dependencies are represented in a conceptual model, hi this paper, we propose an approach that takes into account the effort required to make a conceptual model complete. The higher the effort, the less is the degree of completeness. A metric Effort-based Completeness Index ECI is proposed accordingly. Although metrics previously proposed have an implicit relationship with the required effort, ECI provides the basis to explicitly relate completeness with the effort. Also, the method of computing ECI is simpler. In the proposed approach, first the effort based upon number of changes required to introduce a functional dependency in a given model is computed. Then the total effort for all functional dependencies in the problem domain determines ECI. hi this paper, ECI is calculated for different conceptual models and compared with corresponding CI and FCI values. It is illustrated that the proposed approach can easily be applied to practical problems in which alternative designs of the same problem are to be compared objectively in order to identify the one having better quality.