Investigating object-oriented design metrics to predict fault-proneness of software modules

This paper empirically investigates the relationship of class design level object-oriented metrics with fault proneness of object-oriented software system. The aim of this study is to evaluate the capability of the design attributes related to coupling, cohesion, complexity, inheritance and size with their corresponding metrics in predicting fault proneness both in independent and combine basis. In this paper, we conducted two set of systematic investigations using publicly available project datasets over its multiple subsequent releases to performed our investigation and four machine learning techniques to validated our results. The first set of investigation consisted of applying the univariate logistic regression (ULR), Spearman's correlation and AUC (Area under ROC curve) analysis on four PROMISE datasets. This investigation evaluated the capability of each metric to predict fault proneness, when used in isolation. The second set of experiments consisted of applying the four machine learning techniques on the next two subsequent versions of the same project datasets to validate the effectiveness of the metrics. Based on the results of individual performance of metrics, we used only those metrics that are found significant, to build multivariate prediction models. Next, we evaluated the significant metrics related to design attributes both in isolation and in combination to validated their capability of predicting fault proneness. Our results suggested that models built on coupling and complexity metrics are better and more accurate than those built on using the rest of metrics.