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DEFINITIONS AND VALIDATIONS OF METRICS OF INDIRECT PACKAGE COUPLING IN AN AGILE, OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT

Almugrin, Saleh A.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1436828087

Abstract Details

2015, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Computer Science.
Object-Oriented systems are dynamic, evolve over time, and have to be continuously updated, or they become outdated and irrelevant. Most of the cost during a software system lifecycle is dedicated to support the system's evolution and changes. It is clearly recognized that it is important to understand, assess, and manage the static structure of the software system. Although classes and their relationships represent a very commonly studied static structure of the software system, it may be difficult for the maintainers to understand the system and the communication between its subsystems, as the number of classes increases if the maintainers focus too heavily on classes and their relationships. The maintainers may easily be overwhelmed by the large number of classes and their interdependencies in such large systems. A way to address this complexity problem is to view the system at a higher level of abstraction by grouping classes into more coarsely grained entities, e.g., packages, and then by looking at their interdependencies at this higher level of abstraction. Moreover, organizing a software system into packages can facilitate the development, maintenance, and reusability of software components. However, excessive coupling between packages may hinder package reusability and cause damage to the system design, which decreases the system maintainability and testability. Therefore, the inter-package coupling should be kept minimal, and unnecessary coupling should be avoided. Most researchers have concentrated on direct dependency coupling, which is coupling between similar software units that are directly related to each other. There has been comparatively little study about indirect dependency, which includes coupling between units that are not directly related to each other. This research was originally inspired by R. C. Martin’s seminal work, presented in his book titled “Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices,” which discusses packaging of agile-developed, object-oriented software. Martin’s metrics [56] are well-known package design metrics that can be used in the early stages of software development. Although Martin emphasizes dependency and coupling, his metric suite only measures direct package coupling. The author believes that the accuracy and usefulness of this metric suite could be improved by including a more full and complete scope of what is being measured. In this work, Martin's metric suite is enhanced by an approach that manages packaging in object-oriented software development by analyzing the direct and indirect dependencies of all packages. In addition, we present an experimental study to validate the modified global metrics by showing their relationship to maintainability and testability, and then we construct prediction models for these two external quality attributes. The study results indicate that the new metrics are very promising and lead to improved results. Given the importance of Martin's metrics, it is expected that there will be significant applications for the new metrics.
Auston Melton (Advisor)
Cheng-Chang Lu (Committee Member)
Ye Zhao (Committee Member)
Pratim Datta (Committee Member)
Mohammed Khan (Committee Member)
177 p.
Computer Science
Software measurement; metrics; maintainability; testability; coupling; instability; abstractness; responsibility

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Almugrin, S. A. (2015). DEFINITIONS AND VALIDATIONS OF METRICS OF INDIRECT PACKAGE COUPLING IN AN AGILE, OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1436828087

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Almugrin, Saleh. DEFINITIONS AND VALIDATIONS OF METRICS OF INDIRECT PACKAGE COUPLING IN AN AGILE, OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT. 2015. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1436828087.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Almugrin, Saleh. "DEFINITIONS AND VALIDATIONS OF METRICS OF INDIRECT PACKAGE COUPLING IN AN AGILE, OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1436828087

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1436828087
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© 2015, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License DEFINITIONS AND VALIDATIONS OF METRICS OF INDIRECT PACKAGE COUPLING IN AN AGILE, OBJECT-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT by Saleh A. Almugrin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.