Investigating differences and commonalities of software metric tools

The availability of quality models and metrics that permit an objective evaluation of the quality level of a software product is a relevant aspect for supporting software engineers during their development tasks. In addition, the adoption of software analysis tools that facilitate the measurement of software metrics and application of the quality models can ease the evaluation tasks. This paper proposes a preliminary investigation on the behaviour of existing software metric tools. Specifically, metrics values have been computed by using the different software analysis tools for three software systems of different sizes. Measurements show that, for the same software system and metrics, the software analysis tools provide different values. This could impact on the overall software quality evaluation for the aspect based on the selected metrics.