Abstract

Software quality is crucial in many areas of application. Therefore, asserting software quality is an essential activity of software engineering and research in this domain. Software Quality Ontologies (SQOs) formalize the complex and abstract components and semantic relationships of software quality for knowledge sharing by modeling semantic relationships between software quality concepts. However, due to the high complexity of SQOs, visual representation is beneficial. Up to our knowledge there does not exist an ontology management tool supporting the unique needs to represent the characteristics of SQOs. This thesis introduces a new approach for the visual representation and maintenance of SQOs by reconciling different representation techniques. We evaluate our approach by conducting a user survey with the System Usability Scale. The quantitative analysis of our concepts concludes that the presented approach statistically significantly improves the user experience. In addition, the qualitative analysis of the user survey reveals a better understanding of software quality. Utilizing our concepts in SoQOnto, we are able to support researchers in their understanding and maintenance of SQOs. Additionally, the extendability and replaceability of SoQOnto allows for the implementation of new concepts not considered in this thesis.

Resources

• Thesis report