Evaluation of Software Complexity using Weighted Assignment Technique for Component Based System

Abstract

Abstract

Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) is focused on assembling existing components to build a software system, with a potential benefit of delivering quality systems by using quality components. It departs from the conventional software development process in that it is integration centric as opposed to development centric. Various metrics have been developed by the researchers for improving the quality of the software components. Measurement of an attribute involves a metric that depends only on the value of the attribute, but few or no software engineering attributes or tasks are so simple that measures of them can be direct. Thus, all metrics should be validated. In the present thesis, complexity metric is proposed for component based on the different constituents of the component like, methods and properties with different weights assigned to them. This metric is applied on various JavaBeans components for empirical evaluation. Further, correlation study has been conducted for this metric with several quality characteristics, like, customizability and readability. The study conducted shows negative correlation between them, which confirms the assumption that high complexity of the components leads to the high cost of maintainability.