4.3 Calculating and Viewing Metric Data

If an error occurs during data processing (e.g., a file was not found, metric calculation failed due to a semantic error in a custom metric definition file), the calculation will abort and you are prompted with a description and location of the error. After you fixed the error (e.g., specified the correct project file, corrected the metric definition file), press the  button again to restart the calculation.

Upon successful completion, you can explore the metric data in the main window. SDMetrics provides several views:

View name	Description
Metric Data Tables	Presents metric data as a set of tables
Histograms	Displays histograms for the metrics
Kiviat Diagrams	Displays Kiviat diagrams for the model elements
Rule Checker	Shows design rule violations for the UML model
Design Comparison	Compares metric values to those of a second UML model
Relation Matrices	Shows relations such as "class uses class", "actor associated with use case"
Descriptive Statistics	Concise summary of the descriptive statistics for the metric data
Graph Structures	Shows circular dependencies and connected components in model element relation graphs
Model	Displays the UML model in a tabular format
Catalog	Shows the definitions of all metrics, design rules, and relation matrices
Log	Keeps a log of previous calculation runs

Table 2: Overview of SDMetrics' views

To open a view, use the "Views" menu from the menu bar. The following views are also accessible via toolbar buttons: Metric Data Tables (), Histograms (), Kiviat Diagrams (), and the Rule Checker view ().

Many views allow for navigation to other views. For example, views displaying metric data provide links to the "Catalog" view to display the definition of the metrics, and links to the "Histogram" view to view the distribution of the metrics. After following such links, the history buttons on the toolbar navigate back and forth between the previously visited views.