Comparison, and Applications.pdf

Computer Science Technical Report Design-level Cohesion Measures: Derivation, Comparison, and Applications  Byung-Kyoo Kang kang@ James M. Bieman bieman@ January 29, 1996 Submitted for Publication Technical Report CS-96-104 Computer Science Department Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523-1873 Phone: (970) 491-5792 Fax: (970) 491-2466 WWW:  Research partially supported by NASA Langley Research Center grant NAG1-1461. Design-level Cohesion Measures: Derivation,Comparison, and ApplicationsByung-Kyoo Kang James M. BiemanDepartment of Computer ScienceColorado State UniversityFort Collins, Colorado 80523 USAJanuary 29, 1996AbstractCohesion was rst introduced as a software attribute that could be used to predict properties ofimplementations that would be created from a given design. Unfortunately, cohesion, as originallydened, could not be objectively assessed, while more recently developed objective cohesion measuresdepend on code-level information. We show that association-based and slice-based approaches can be usedto measure cohesion using only design-level information. Our design-level cohesion measures are formallydened, can be readily implemented, and can support software design, maintenance, and restructuring.Index terms | cohesion, software measurement and metrics, software design, softwaremaintenance, software restructuring and re-engineering, software visualization, softwarereuse.1 IntroductionModule cohesion was dened by Yourdan and Constantine as \how tightly bound or related its internalelements are to one another[10, p. 106]. They describe cohesion as an attribute of designs, rather than code,and an attribute that can be used to predict properties of implementations such as \ease of debugging, easeof maintenance, and ease of modication [10, p. 140]. Since cohesion refers to the degree to which modulecomponents belong together, cohesion measurement should prove to be a very useful restructuring tool [3].Following the original guidelines [7