Assessing the Impact of Automatic Static Analysis on Software Quality

Automatic static analysis (ASA) tools analyze the source or compiled code of a software system looking for violations of recommended programming practices (called issues) that might either cause failures or degrade some dimensions of software quality. Dr. Antonio Vetrò, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Maurizio Morisio and Prof. Dr. Marco Torchiano, has focused his doctoral research in studying how to improve software quality by applying ASA. He has taken the standard ISO/IEC 25010 as a reference model and has focused on four main areas: Functional suitability, Reliability, Performance and Maintainability (in terms of Technical Debt). The epistemological approach used is that one of empirical software engineering. Dr. Vetrò has also investigated new research directions for this field, i.e. using ASA for improving software energy efficiency and to detect problems derived from the interaction of different languages. The contribution is finally enriched with a generalized process for researchers and practitioners to improve software quality through ASA and create a body of knowledge on the topic based on empirical evidence. This book represents a first step towards these goals.

Antonio Vetrò is a postdoctoral research fellow at TU München (Germany). He got a Ph.D in Software Engineering at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 2013, and has been junior scientist at Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, MD, USA, in 2011. He is specialised on empirical methodologies and analysis of process and product data.