Monthly Archives: June 2013

Creation of custom metrics (4)

Métriques personnaliséesLast article in our series on creating custom metrics.

We will address different costs regarding the customization of metrics, generally poorly identified or completely ignored in a project of selection of a code analysis tool.

We will conclude by summarizing all the different questions to ask to a customer in order to determine if creating custom metrics is really a criterion for choosing such a tool.
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Creation of custom metrics (3)

NewMetric3

Third article in our series on creating custom metrics, and why the ability to define your own metrics in a code analysis tool is not the important factor that everyone believes it is.

We saw in the first article that the most simple metrics were not the most numerous and in the second post in this series, that the most interesting and important rules were also the more complex to implement, sometimes (or often) impossible.

In this post, we will address the issue of customization in terms of application technology, before a final article will summarize and identify all the right questions.  Continue reading

Creation of custom metrics (2)

Créer des métriques personnalisées (2)

Is there any interest in creating its own metrics in a code analysis tool? What benefits can we expect? What disadvantages? What obstacles are we going to meet?

It always strikes me to see that these issues are mostly ignored when choosing a tool. Most of the times, the question is to know what is the ease or the level of difficulty to customize the software and create his own rules rather than wondering if it is really needed.

The objective of this series of articles is therefore to clarify these questions and help you to choose the right criteria if you want to acquire a code analysis tool. If you are a quality consultant and must assist a client for such a choice, you can discuss these issues with him to help him in his selection.  Continue reading

Creation of custom metrics

Création de métriques personnaliséesA quality consultant asks me if it is “Possible to create your own metrics with Sonar?” and “Is it easy to introduce new rules?”.

I know he is working for a customer who wants to choose a code analysis tool. And this is the typical criteria that you will systematically found in the specifications that are elaborated when it comes to choosing such a tool.

It has become a universally accepted rule, even to the point that some software vendors have made of this a selling point and include in their pre-sales demos the creation of a new rule. This is not critical but people like it. Can you imagine a car salesman opening the hood of a running vehicle to adjust the carburator or to add fuel? It would be spectacular, but is it really useful? Continue reading