Software Structural Stability Evaluation Method Based on Motifs

The issue on finding an effective evaluation method on software structural stability is rarely touched upon in software security research. An assessment method of software microstructural stability was developed by Khalil in 2002. A new evaluation method on software structural stability is proposed in this paper, which is based on Motifs according to the theory of complex networks. Average shortest path length comparison and clustering coefficient with degree distribution are used in the method, in which the key evaluation indexes are used to analyze software structural stability. The comparison experiments have been done between the proposed method and Khalil’s method. 10 real software systems of different sizes and types are selected in the experiments to verify the proposed evaluation method. The result shows that the proposed method is correct and effective.