Abstract: This paper presents an empirical study on one of the popular web API repositories, www.programmableweb.com. The study is to ascertain the impact of the structure and formulation of external web API quality factors on the overall web API quality. The study is based on the hypothesis that, in such a multi-factor quality measurement, the structure and formulation of the quality factors can make a substantial difference in its quantification. Specifically, we employ statistical tools such as exploratory factor analysis, to determine the latent factors that contributes to web API quality. We subsequently determine the loading of each latent factors to propose a new quality model for web API quality computation.
Authors: Esi Adeborna (University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA); Kenneth K Fletcher (University of Massachusetts Boston, USA)
Email: esi_adeborna@student.uml.edu, kenneth.fletcher@umb.edu