MAISA
Metrics for Analysis and Improvement of Software Architectures

MAISA is a research and development project aiming at developing methods for the measurement of software quality at the design level. The metrics are computed from the system's architectural description, predicting the quality attributes of the system derived from it. Most notably, size and performance metrics are addressed. The performance analysis is refined by analysis at code level.

The work in the MAISA project started on the first of September 1999 and ended at the end of December 2001.

The project has been funded by TEKES and the following industry partners:

• Space Systems Finland,
• Nokia Mobile Phones,
• Nokia Research Center, and
• Kone Oyj.

Past events

• September 1, 1999: Project kick-off meeting
• November 1999: MAISA-related proposal for a student software project (in Finnish)
• November 8, 1999: State-of-the-art and tool reports
• December 29, 1999: Requirements specification (draft)
• February 28, 2000: Requirements specification (version 0.9)
• March 9, 2000: Requirements specification, version 1.0
• April 2000: MAISA-related proposal for a student software project (in Finnish)
• May 31, 2000: Alpha version of the Maisa tool
• August 17, 2000: Pattern and metric reports
• October 13, 2000: Beta version of the Maisa tool distributed to the industry partners
• November 2000: Two MAISA-related proposals (graphical pattern editor and visualization of metrics) for student software projects (in Finnish)
• February 28, 2001: Version 1.0 of the Maisa tool available
• April 2, 2001: Updated the metrics report
• June 6, 2001: Version 1.1 of the Maisa tool available
• September 6, 2001: Version 1.2 of the Maisa tool available
• November 2001: Two MAISA-related proposals (supporting group work in Maisa and performance prediction) for student software projects (in Finnish)
• December 17, 2001: Updated user and maintenance manuals
• January 2002: MAISA-related student software project on performance begins; project group home page (in Finnish)
• September 2002: MAISA-related student software project on performance continues the work of the previous student project; project group home page (in Finnish)
• January 2003: MAISA-related student software project on importing XMI diagrams begins; project group home page (in Finnish)

Reports

• Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, Olioperustaisen ohjelmistomittauksen nykytila (State-of-the-art of object-oriented software metrics) (in Finnish); Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Report C-1999-52, 35 p.
• Juha Gustafsson, UML-perustaiset ohjelmistotyökalut (UML based software development tools) (in Finnish); November 1999.
• Jukka Paakki, Anssi Karhinen, Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, A. Inkeri Verkamo, Software metrics by architectural pattern mining; In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Software: Theory and Practice (16th IFIP World Computer Congress), Beijing, China, August 2000, 325-332.
• Lilli Nenonen, Juha Gustafsson, Jukka Paakki, A. Inkeri Verkamo, Measuring object-oriented software architectures from UML diagrams; In: Proceedings of the 4th International ECOOP Workshop on Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering, Sophia Antipolis, France, June 2000, 87-100.
• A. Inkeri Verkamo, Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, Jukka Paakki, Design patterns in performance prediction; In: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Software and Performance, Ottawa, Canada, September 2000, 143-144.
• Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, Jukka Paakki, A. Inkeri Verkamo, Performance modeling in UML; April 2000.
• Lilli Nenonen, Juha Gustafsson, Pattern recognition in the MAISA tool; August 2000.
• Juha Gustafsson, Metrics calculation in MAISA; updated April 2001.
• Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, User manual for the MAISA metric tool, Version beta; October 2000.
• A. Inkeri Verkamo, Juha Gustafsson, Lilli Nenonen, Jukka Paakki, Measuring design diagrams for product quality evaluation; In: Proceedings of the 12th European Software Control and Metrics Conference, London, England, April 2001, 357-366.
• Hui Zheng, Runtime Memory Usage Estimation from UML Diagrams; MSc Thesis, University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report C-2001-21, April 2001.
• Juha Gustafsson, Software Quality Evaluation in the Design Phase; In: Proceedings of the Finnish Data Processing Week 2001, Petrozavodsk, Russia, May 2001, 57-66.
• Rudolf Ferenc, Juha Gustafsson, Lászlo Müller, Jukka Paakki, Recognizing design patterns in C++ programs with the integration of Columbus and MAISA; In: Proceedings of the 7th Symposium on Programming Languages and Software Tools (SPLST'2001), Szeged, Hungary, June 2001, 58-70.
• Minna Majuri, Suunnittelumallien visualisointi (Design pattern visualization) (in Finnish); MSc Thesis, University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report C-2001-48, August 2001.
• Juha Gustafsson, Jukka Paakki, Lilli Nenonen, and A. Inkeri Verkamo, Architecture-centric software evolution by software metrics and design patterns; In: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR2002), Budapest, Hungary, March 2002, 108-115.
• David Gregorio García, Sequence Diagrams in MAISA; Thesis; October 2002.
• Topias Marttila, Aktiviteettikaavioiden ja suorituspolkujen visualisointi (Visualization of activity diagrams and execution paths) (in Finnish); MSc Thesis, University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report C-2004-11, January 2004.
• Juha Gustafsson, Performance Modeling and Visualization with UML; In: Proceedings of the 2nd Nordic UML Workshop (NWUML2004), Turku, Finland, August 2004, 143-150.

Links

Project group members

• Jukka Paakki (project leader), (mail)
• Inkeri Verkamo, (mail)
• Juha Gustafsson, (mail)
• Lilli Nenonen

The pattern detection facility was originally designed and implemented by Pauli Misikangas as part of his Master's Thesis work and it is available separately under GNU Lesser General Public License.