A Quality Model for the Ada Standard Container Library

The existence of a standard container library has been largely recognized as a key feature for improving the quality and effectiveness of Ada programming. In this paper, we aim at providing a quality model for making explicit the quality features (those concerning functionality, suitability and by the like) that determine the form that such a library might take. Quality features are arranged hierarchically according to the ISO/IEC quality standard. We tailor this standard to the specific context of container libraries, by identifying their observable attributes and establishing some tradeoffs among them. Afterwards, we apply the resulting model to a couple of existing container libraries, for illustration purposes. As main contribution of our proposal, we may say that the resulting quality model provides a structured framework for (1) discussing and evaluating the capabilities that the Ada Standard Container Library might offer, and (2) analyzing the consequences of the decisions taken during its design.