Assessment Model technical information on Documentation - V2

Assessment Model comparison process

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Info

Summary: This section explains how to compare two Assessment Models using CAST Management Studio to highlight differences between them.

Introduction

CAST’s Assessment Model contains multiple settings and values that are used to measure the Quality and Quantity of a given Application. Therefore, the results of an analysis are heavily dependent on the settings defined in the Assessment Model you are using. If you change to a new Assessment Model (for example when upgrading to a new release of AIP Core, or when switching to a custom Assessment Model) the results of your analyses will be impacted (for example a change a threshold value for a given Quality Rule could result in more or less violations of the rule). As such, it is important to be able to compare Assessment Models so that you are aware what has changed should you decide to switch to a new model.

Background Facts and Business Value Metric upload

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Optionally, you can upload external data that will enrich the content of the Health Dashboard and Engineering Dashboards. External data is either Background Facts, or a Business Value Metric. This can be done BEFORE you generate a snapshot, or AFTER you generate a snapshot.

Background Facts can provide additional information in a single interface that is not based on source code analysis but that can advantageously be cross-referenced with quality and quantity information. You can declare new and update existing Background Facts (e.g., set up the unit in which Effort is uploaded, set up the currency of Cost information…). These metrics are numerical values and they are attached to Modules only. To determine the Background Fact value of an Application, the dashboard will display the sum total of all contained Modules.

Defining consolidation weighting settings

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Info

Summary: this section explains how scores/grades for your Applications (displayed in the Health Dashboard) are generated and how you can change the weighting to suit your environment. You should also read Grade and compliance score calculation.

Introduction

CAST AIP uses specific algorithms to determine a score/grade (from 1 (low) to 4 (high)) for all the source code in the Application for each Health Factor, Technical Criterion, Quality Rule, Quality Measure and Quality Distribution. These scores/grades are displayed as “Application level” scores/grades in the Health Dashboard), as highlighted below:

Grade and compliance calculation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What is a grade?

A grade is a value between 1.00 and 4.00 to assess a risk:

The rule grade is calculated for:

each functional module
each functional module split by technology
application: in this case the application grade comes from the representative functional module which is:
- either the Full Content Module if it exists
- or the union content module

What does it mean when a grade equals to zero?

A rule with zero weight is a rule that is both enabled (active), but has no impact on any parent technical criterion - this means that the rule can be “previewed” (i.e. violations can be seen) without impacting any grades. Configuring a rule with a weight of 0 is supported when using AIP Core ≥ 8.3.32 - you can do this using the Assessment Model interface in AIP Console. A zero value for a technical criterion grade means that all child rules contribute to this grade with a zero weight. A zero grade is not an assessment value, it is a result allowing a navigation to the child rules and their violations in “preview” mode. So a zero grade means “no value” for this technical criterion.

Technical Debt - calculation and modification

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Info

Summary: The sections below explain how the Technical Debt value is calculated and how the default values can be modified if necessary. Technical Debt configuration is undertaken in the CAST Management Studio, via the Assessment Models editor. Note that an extension exists to calculate OMG Technical Debt in addition to Technical Debt described below.

Calculation

Technical Debt is calculated on an Application basis, as follows:

Info

Note that low, medium and high severity violations refer to the weight of a violated Quality Rule as defined in the Assessment Model:

XXL and XXS tables rules enablement

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

XXL

XXL table rules are performance related rules that help detect incorrect or poorly performing SQL queries running on XXL tables. XXL tables can be defined as extremely large tables, containing a large amount of data. The goal is to use table size from production systems because development / integration systems may not feature really large tables and would not help detect real threat on application performance levels. If the information is not physically accessible (e.g.: first release of an application with no production environment), it is worth simulating the information by identifying tables that are expected to be large and by inputting a fake size, yet greater than the threshold in use in the “XXL tables” diagnostics.