Sizing Data-Intensive Systems from ER Model

This paper proposes a method for building software size model from extended ER diagram through the use of regression models and has collected some real data from the industry to do a preliminary validation of the proposed method.

Abstract

There is still much problem in sizing software despite the existence of well-known software sizing methods such as Function Point method. Many developers still continue to use ad-hoc methods or so called expert approaches. This is mainly due to the fact that the existing methods require much information that is difficult to identify or estimate in the early stage of a software project. The accuracy of ad-hoc and expert methods also has much problem. The entity-relationship (ER) model is widely used in conceptual modeling (requirements analysis) for data-intensive systems. The characteristic of a data-intensive system, and therefore the source code of its software, is actually well characterized by the ER diagram that models its data. This paper proposes a method for building software size model from extended ER diagram through the use of regression models. We have collected some real data from the industry to do a preliminary validation of the proposed method. The result of the validation is very encouraging.