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Source code metrics for programmable logic controller (PLC) ladder diagram (LD) visual programming language

Published: 14 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The IEC 611131-3, an open international standard for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) defines several domain specific languages for industrial and process automation. Domain specific languages have several features, programming constructs and notations which are different than general purpose languages and hence the traditional source code metrics for general purpose programming languages cannot be directly applied to domain specific languages for writing control programs in the area of industrial automation. We propose source code level metrics to measure size, vocabulary, cognitive complexity and testing complexity of a visual Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) programming language. We present metrics for Ladder Diagram (LD) programming language which is one of the five languages defined in the IEC 61131-3 standard. The proposed metric is based on factors like number of distinct operators and operands, total number of operators and operands, number of rungs, weights of different basic control structures, structure of the program and control flow. We apply Weyukur's property to validate the metrics and evaluate the number of properties satisfied by the proposed metric.

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cover image ACM Conferences
WETSoM '16: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Metrics
May 2016
76 pages
ISBN:9781450341776
DOI:10.1145/2897695
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 14 May 2016

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Author Tags

  1. cyclomatic complexity
  2. halstead metrics
  3. ladder diagram (LD)
  4. programmable logic controller (PLC) programming languages
  5. software complexity metrics
  6. software size metrics
  7. source code metrics
  8. structured text

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  • (2023)Design of Ball Screw Driven Positioning System2023 International Conference on Sustainable Communication Networks and Application (ICSCNA)10.1109/ICSCNA58489.2023.10370406(534-539)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Towards A Metrics Suite for the Complexity Analysis of LabVIEW Systems ModelsScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2023.102931(102931)Online publication date: Feb-2023
  • (2021)Measuring the Overall Complexity of Graphical and Textual IEC 61131-3 Control SoftwareIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2021.30848866:3(5784-5791)Online publication date: Jul-2021
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