Quantitatively Measuring Object-Oriented Couplings

One key to several quality factors of software is the way components are connected. Software coupling can be used to estimate a number of quality factors, including maintainability, complexity, and reliability. Object-oriented languages are designed to reduce the number of dependencies among classes, which encourages separation of concerns and should reduce the amount of coupling. At the same time, the object-oriented language features change the way the connections are made, how they must be analyzed, and how they are measured. This paper discusses software couplings based on object-oriented relationships between classes, specifically focusing on types of couplings that are not available until after the implementation is completed, and presents a static analysis tool that measures couplings among classes in Java packages.