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I'm using sonar to analyze a set of related projects. And I'm using SQALE Rating to justify the need for a refactoring

My question is what is the logic behind SQALE to Technical Debt ratio mapping?

Why SQALE A rating is Tech Debt in range from 0% to 5%. But not 0% to 3% for instance? How should I define a SQALE rating limits? Why 5% Tech debt is good? Is there any methodology I can use? Or i have to come up with this standards by my own? And is there a way in SonarQube to change them?

Andrew
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1 Answers1

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The SQALE Rating is a direct correlation with the Technical Debt Ratio of your project. The Technical Debt Ratio is the following:

  • The technical debt of your project (= sum of the debt of all issues)
  • Divided by the estimation of the cost to rewrite your application from scratch

The idea is to tell you that if this ratio "Debt vs. cost to rewrite" grows too high, maybe it's a good time to rewrite the application instead of spending time reimbursing your debt.

By default, SonarQube is configured to give a A rating when the ratio is below 5%. But this is just a default configuration that you can override in the global administration page under "Configuration > General Settings > Technical Debt".

Fabrice - SonarSource Team
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  • Are there any example Open Source projects that have their SQALE score displayed (in AppVeyor or the like...) – Steve Dunn Jul 02 '18 at 16:33
  • A bunch of projects publishes analyses on [sonarcloud.io](https://sonarcloud.io/explore/projects). Some random examples: [MySQL](https://sonarcloud.io/dashboard?id=mysql), [ReactOS](https://sonarcloud.io/dashboard?id=reactos-henryju), [KeepassXC](https://sonarcloud.io/dashboard?id=keepassxc). Note that not all of the projects on SonarCloud are analysed automatically by CI systems, and it's not always the maintainer(s) who set up the analysis. Still, it may be useful to get an idea about how SonarQube and its SQUALE ratings work. – Jens Bannmann Jul 09 '18 at 20:40