Empirical Analysis of Function Points in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Applications

Abstract

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an emerging area of software engineering, based on the concept of “re-usable services†to support the development of rapid, economical and stable distributed application even in heterogeneous environments. Function point is considered an accurate and well established approach among its competitors to estimate the efforts, size and functionality of software development projects. Estimating the cost, size and efforts for SOA application is a difficult task due to its diverse nature and loose coupling behavior, which results in an inaccurate estimate to measure the efforts, size and functionality of SOA applications. This research paper explores the shortcomings of function point estimation technique and suggests calibration in its value adjustment factor to properly map the characteristics of SOA applications. A Work flow model is proposed to estimate the efforts and functionality of SOA application to consider the Service development efforts as well as Service Integration efforts. Empirical Results shows considerable improvements in estimation process to reduce the error percentage in performance measures like Magnitude of relative error, Mean Magnitude of relative error and Root Mean Square Error. Copyright © www.iiste.org

Key Words: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Integration Efforts, Efforts Estimation, Function Point Analysis,