development and use, also considering technologic evolution such as changes ... development methodologies that are useful in applications for the WWW.
METRICS FOR THE WEB A Holistic View Based on Historical Database David Lourenço da Costa Luiz Camolesi Jr. UNIMEP – Methodist University of Piracicaba
Rodovia do Açúcar, Km 156 – CEP 13.400-911 Piracicaba, SP- Brazil
Abstract:
This article presents the inclusion of historical aspect to be considered within the holistic view of the web sites development process. In this new aspect, the goal is to comparatively analyze a new project in relation to other projects developed, to find common elements between them (number of hits for a period of time, graphic elements number, routes to be followed, interaction with multi-channels, etc.), and how these elements have influenced its development and use, also considering technologic evolution such as changes in tools or development methodologies.
Key words:
Metrics, Database, Web Development.
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INTRODUCTION
The system development process has gone through a big evolution in the last few years. This evolution is due to the emergence of new development methodologies such as object orientation (OO), and the computer architectures evolution such as Client-Server and the current Web Services. The WWW has gone through, in the last few years, a huge growth, being accessed nowadays by 10% of the world population, around 580 million of users [4]. Although this growth is significant, there is still a huge divide between "digital rich" and "digital poor" - while Europe comprehend 32% of the total users, the Middle Eastern and African countries together represent only 2%. In this scenario, Brazil has 14 million users and the forecast is 1 billion users in 2005.
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The growth in the internet users number is related to the number and diversity of available applications (commerce, business, scientific, governmental, entertainment, etc). This growth is reflected in the way the applications are developed, because new requirements, such as database access, content customization, transaction security, access to media such as video and audio, etc, have also grown and became more complex, making it necessary to deal with this process through engineering resources (Web Engineering) [3]. Nowadays, competitive Web Sites need to be constantly edited to ensure that their content is effective, and for highly dynamic and customized sites the response must be in real time through learning tools [3]. The research performed by the Cutter consortium indicates that the majority of the Web Sites are far from the ideal, being that: 84% of the applications don't fulfill the business needs; 79% are delivered past their due dates; 63% exceed the budget; 53% don't have the required functionality; 52% present low quality.
2.
RELATED WORKS
Several works have been proposed aiming to present metrics and new development methodologies that are useful in applications for the WWW. Among these works is [3], that proposes ten steps which must be followed in the application construction, having steps focused in resource measurement and development process control. [8] proposes metrics to be used in the requirements gathering phase, [5] proposes the performance measurement of electronic commerce Web Sites (e-commerce), based on classifying good and bad clients, according to their connection characteristics. Also related to electronic commerce, [6] presents a graph to represent a model of client behavior. [2] classifies the Web Sites quality based on the navigation structure. Some works emphasize the use of legacy metrics such as lines of code (LOC), function point analysis (FPA), cyclomatic complexity and COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) together with the ISO standards (International Standardization Organization) and the CMM model (Capability Maturity Model) [5][7]. These works also present case studies to demonstrate the application of metrics and proposed methodologies, integrated to statistics methods for forecast, such as linear regression in experimental environments and the real world.
Metrics for the Web
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DEVELOPMENT ORIENTED METRICS
The Gartner Research Group [1] proposes an holistic view to the web development process, involving six aspects: • Efficiency Analysis- the goal is the performance improvement using metrics to count the number of visitors (per hour, day of the week, season, etc), time to read pages using different speed connections, and the number of errors and abandons; • Route Analysis- aims to improve the routes to access the more requested parts of the Web Site. It uses metrics to count the number of hits per page, frequently searched texts, and metrics to analyze banners, such as clickstream data and look-to-buy, through the analysis of Web Logs and specific packages of analysis, such as Accrue Software, Broadbase Software, Epiphany, NetGenesis, Net Perceptions; • Design- the goal is to analyze how the graphic elements of the Web Site are perceived by the users and what is the impact in the usability. It uses metrics to count the number of graphic elements per page, how these elements are perceived by the users, as well as the level of the mouse movement during the navigation; • Content- aims to analyze the correctness and how the Web Site content is perceived by the users through surveys to be filled in the Web Site, or sent through e-mail or by using active telemarketing resources; • Multi-Channel- the goal is to measure how the Web Site channel interacts with other channels used in the applications such as electronic mail, call centers and physical stores for instance. The used metrics measure the number of sales through the Web Site and the activity of call centers based on data from their production systems; • Business Requirements- the goal is to verify the economic viability of the Web Site through financial analysis of the business. For this purpose, the Return of Investment (ROI) and the profitability are measured through data gathered from specific systems used for that analysis type. This work propose the inclusion of another aspect to be considered within the holistic view of the development process, which is the Project History Analysis. In this new aspect, the goal is to comparatively analyze a new project in relation to other projects developed, to find common elements between them (number of hits for a period of time, number of graphic elements, routes to be followed), and how these elements have influenced its development and use, also considering technologic evolution such as changes in tools or development methodologies. Thus, in the project's history the impact (in terms of creation time), the register of the tool release changes to create graphic elements could have an indication, in a newer project, that the productivity of the creation team will
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be affected in case the same event occur. This analysis is based on the construction of a temporal database for metrics, where the variables collected to the metrics used, and the general aspects of projects that must be registered. If a new project is created there would be a comparison with previous projects, searching for common elements that would serve as orientation in the definition of metrics.
4.
CONCLUSION
The web applications development has become more complex because it must have an engineering to be followed, besides the existing “artistic” component. As metrics are used to improve the development process, a critical analysis of what is to be measure (development effort, usability, reliability, response time, etc), to choose the most adequate metric. The development must be seen in an holistic way, which involves not only the use of technologies and the artistic expression of creation, but also external factors such as the application interaction with other media (electronic mail, legacy systems, etc) and the economic viability analysis of the business. The creation of a history database with the metrics and data derived from several projects can offer a valuable resource in the development of new projects.
REFERENCES [1] BUYTENDIJK, F .; JANOWSKI, W., Web Metrics: Nuggets of Gold Under a Mountain of Data, Gartner Advisor Research and Advisory Services, 27 February 2001. [2] CHANG, W.; HON, S., Assessing the Quality of Web-Based Applications via Navigational Structures, IEEE MultiMedia, Vol. 14, No. 1; july-sept 2002, pp. 22-57. [3] GINIGE, A.; MURUGESAN, S., The Essence of Web Engineering, IEEE MultiMedia, Vol. 8, No. 2; april-june 2001, pp. 22-25. [4] WARREN, P.; BOLDYREFF, C.; MUNRO, M., The Evolution of Websites, Proc. Seventh Int’l Workshop on Program Comprehension, IEEE Computer Soc. Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1999, pp. 178-185. [5] KRISHNAMURTHY, B.; WILLS, C., Improving Web Performance by Client Characterization Driven Server Adaptation, Proc. Eleventh Int’l Conference on World Wide Web, ACM Press, New York, NY, 2002, pp. 305-316. [6] MENASCÉ, D.; FONSECA, R.; ALMEIDA, V.; MENDES, M., A Methodology for Workload Characterization of E-commerce Sites, Proc. First ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, ACM Press, New York, NY, 1999, pp. 119-128. [7] MENDES, E .; MOSLEY, N.; COUNSELL, S., Web Metrics - Estimating Design and Authoring Effort, IEEE MultiMedia, Vol. 8, No. 1; january-march 2001, pp. 50-57. [8] REIS, T.; CASTRO, J.; OLSINA, L., Medição da Qualidade de Aplicações Web na Fase de Requisitos.Presented at the 16th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering (SBES’2002); Gramado, RS, Brazil, 2002.
Metrics for the Web
Extended Abstract published in Proceedings of Workshops and Posters III IFIP International Conference on E-Commerce, E-Business and E-Government
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