Software Metrics and the Object-Oriented Paradigm

Li, Wei and Cooley, Charles and Lewis, John A. and Henry, Sallie M. (1990) Software Metrics and the Object-Oriented Paradigm. Technical Report TR-90-55, Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Abstract

Software metrics are in use to guide current software development practices. As commercial organizations make use of the benefits of the object-oriented paradigm, the desire to apply metrics to that paradigm has logically followed. However, standard procedural metrics are limited in their ability to describe true object-oriented designs and code, and in some aspects fail outright. This paper describes the difficulties in applying standard metrics to object-oriented code and defines a set of metrics which are specifically geared toward the features which make the object-oriented approach unique.