The Web Measurement Environment (WebME)

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Problem: Measurement collection activities have been emphasized as effective instruments for gaining control and insight into software activities. Because of this, many organizations have incorporated data collection into their software processes. Although the data are being collected, often, the collection process is write-only. That is, the data are not being used easily or effectively. In order to maximize the benefits gained from data collection activities, techniques which are accessible and present the data in intelligible ways are necessary. In addition, these techniques must be flexible and easily incorporated into existing processes.

The SME, Software Management Environment, of NASA's Flight Dynamics Division and the Software Engineering Laboratory attempts to address part of this problem. It allows data from several projects to be graphically displayed in various ways and plots underlying models of the data. The SME system was built in the mid-80's and has some limitations. Among the weaknesses are an antiquated user interface, static data attributes and simple data modeling techniques.

Goal: To design and implement a data visualization tool in order to utilize collected data more easily and effectively. More specifically, we want to extend the capabilities of SME to make it more flexible and useful for multiple domains and data types.