Context. Many organizations are adopting the COSMIC method to size software products for estimating and controlling their development costs and performances. Using a functional size measurement method requires specialized expertise and can be time-consuming. Objectives. Since UML is the de facto industrial modeling language standard for object-oriented systems, it is very useful to understand how to exploit UML models for measuring software systems and for developing tools that can automatically derive the COSMIC size from them. This paper provides an answer to these needs. Method. We present a measurement procedure to derive the COSMIC functional size from UML software artifacts and a tool, named J-UML COSMIC, for the automation of the procedure. Based on the observation that different development processes are characterized by the use of different UML models, the tool has been designed to work with different UML artifacts (such as use case models, package diagrams, component diagrams, class diagrams, activity diagrams, and sequence diagrams) and to adapt to the specific employed process. To assess the measurement procedure and J-UML COSMIC, we have carried out two case studies and compared the measurement results provided by the tool with the ones obtained by experts applying the standard COSMIC method. Results. Using the proposed measurement procedure the tool is able to identify from UML software models all the COSMIC concepts and data movements identified by the experts. Moreover, the tool allows us to obtain incremental accurate measurements when new models are considered or existing ones are detailed. Conclusions. The designed approach is able to automatically measure the functional size starting from UML artifacts and providing higher accurate results when more data is available.

中文翻译：

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基于UML模型的COSMIC测量程序的设计和自动化

上下文。许多组织正在采用COSMIC方法来确定软件产品的大小，以估算和控制其开发成本和性能。使用功能尺寸测量方法需要专业知识，并且可能很耗时。目标。由于UML是面向对象系统的事实上的工业建模语言标准，因此了解如何利用UML模型来测量软件系统以及开发可从中自动得出COSMIC大小的工具非常有用。本文为这些需求提供了答案。方法。我们提出了一种测量程序，该程序可以从UML软件工件和名为J-UML COSMIC的工具中自动得出COSMIC功能大小，以实现该过程的自动化。基于观察到不同的开发过程通过使用不同的UML模型来表征的特点，该工具被设计为可与不同的UML工件一起使用（例如用例模型，包图，组件图，类图，活动图和序列）图）并适应特定的使用过程。为了评估测量程序和J-UML COSMIC，我们进行了两个案例研究，并将该工具提供的测量结果与专家使用标准COSMIC方法获得的测量结果进行了比较。结果。使用建议的测量程序，该工具能够从UML软件模型中识别专家识别出的所有COSMIC概念和数据移动。此外，当考虑新模型或详细描述现有模型时，该工具还可以使我们获得递增的精确测量结果。结论。设计的方法能够从UML工件开始自动测量功能大小，并在有更多数据时提供更高的准确结果。