An Efficient Reusability Measure for Component Based Software Development

Abstract

The object oriented technology uses objects as its fundamental building blocks. So, the software metrics techniques for object oriented programs must be different from the standard metrics set. Object oriented software development need a different methodology from more traditional functional decomposition and data flow development methods. This research work concentrates on estimating the reusability capacity of java programs that uses interfaces. The primary purpose of this research work is to analytically and empirically validate a set of metrics that can be used to measure the quality of an object-oriented design in terms of the using interfaces. Reusability is the phenomenon which can determine the degree of features that are reused in building applications. There are number of metrics available for measuring the reusability for object-oriented systems. These metrics mainly focus on the object structure, which reflects on each individual entity such as methods and classes, and on the external attributes that measures the interaction among entities such as coupling, inheritance and interface. In order to realize the reuse of components effectively in Component Based System Development (CBSD), it is required to measure the reusability of components. The new paradigm in software development environment is the use of Object Oriented Design (OOD). In this paper, understandability of component interfaces is considered as a major quality affecting reusability of software components. A set of metrics for measuring properties believed to be relevant to understandability and reusability of software components are presented. Then, their usefulness and relevance are analyzed based upon data gathered from the measurement of a variety of component interfaces.