id: Simula.SE.625
authors: Jehad Al Dallal and Lionel Briand
title: An Object-Oriented High-Level Design Class Cohesion Metric
publication_year: 2009
abstract: Class cohesion is an important object-oriented software quality attribute. Assessing  class cohesion and improving class quality during the object-oriented design phase  leads to more comprehensible and maintainable software. One issue with the few  existing cohesion metrics targeted at the high-level design phase is that they are not  based on realistic assumptions and do not fulfill expected mathematical properties. In  this paper, we address this problem by introducing the notion of similarity between  pairs of methods and pairs of attribute types in a class, and we use it as a basis to  introduce a novel high-level design-based class cohesion metric. The metric considers  method-method, attribute-attribute, and attribute-method direct and indirect  interactions. We validate this Similarity-based Class Cohesion (SCC) metric  theoretically and empirically. The former includes a careful study of the mathematical  properties of the metric whereas the latter investigates, using four open source  software systems and ten cohesion metrics, whether SCC helps predicts faults more  accurately than other comparable cohesion metrics, considered individually or in  combination,. Results confirm that SCC is based on more justifiable theoretical  principles, relies on more realistic assumptions, and better predicts class quality.
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institution: Simula Research Laboratory
publication_type: Simula Technical Report
number: 2009-1
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publication_state: Submitted
simula_ou: [<Department at /simula/department/certus>, <Department at /simula/research/approve>]
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