Coupling and cohesion measures for evaluation of component reusability

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an account of new measures of coupling and cohesion developed to assess the reusability of Java components retrieved from the internet by a search engine. These measures differ from the majority of established metrics in two respects: they reflect the degree to which entities are coupled or resemble each other, and they take account of indirect couplings or similarities. An empirical comparison of the new measures with eight established metrics shows the new measures are consistently superior at ranking components according to their reusability.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.8 Metrics
          Subjects: Complexity measures

General Terms:
Experimentation, Measurement

Keywords:
cohesion, coupling, reusability