Analyzing software systems using combinations of metric.pdfVIP

Analyzing Softw are Systems by Using Combinations of Metrics Markus Bauer, FZI Karlsruhe March 29, 1999 Abstract Reengineering an ob ject oriented software system requires some analysis of the existing system. This pap er describ es, how a combination of complex- ity and coupling metrics can b e used to make such an analysis more fo cused and thus more eective: the metrics are used to identify the key classes of a system, i.e. classes that structure the system and implement its most imp or- tant concepts | understanding them and their collab orations is a go o d basis for every reengineering task. The pap er is intended to b e particularly helpful for practitioners, therefore it fo cuses on practical exp eriences that have b een made with various case studies. Keywords: ob ject orientation, reengineering, software metrics, mo del capture 1 Intro duction The ability to reengineer ob ject oriented legacy systems and transform them into more exible and extensible systems has b ecome a matter of vital interest in to- days software industry. To allow such a transformation of a legacy system into an improved exible system two tasks are particularly imp ortant [CDD + 99]:  model capture: do cument and understand the existing system, its structure and its inner workings  pr oblem detection: identify p ossible quality or exibility related problems of the system Ob ject oriented software metrics are exp ected to supp ort these tasks, but in practice they have only b een applied with limited success. Though a vast amount of metrics have b een dened in the past (see for example [CK94], [LH93] or [BK95