Software measurement for the space shuttle HAL/S maintenance environment

The authors discuss the development of a complexity domain model for the HAL/S programming language in which all of the space shuttle software is written. Their research has indicated that some aspects of software complexity in other programming language environments are strongly related to software problems incurred during software maintenance. The goal of the current research effort is to establish the particular relationship between the complexity domain model and measurable aspects of software maintenance. From a maintenance perspective, the specific objective is to identify those software complexity attributes that are most closely related to or highly correlated with measures related to software maintenance. This project is expected to lead to the creation of a large database of space system metrics data, the development of a metrics capture tool, and the identification of leading indicators of software maintenance problems