In-out interaction complexity metrics for component-based software

Abstract

In the current state of software engineering, component-based software development is one of the most alluring paradigms for developing large and complex software products. In this software engineering methodology pre-engineered, pre-tested, context-based, adaptable, deployable software components are assembled according to a predefined architecture. Rather than developing a system from scratch, component-based software development emphasizes the integration of these components according to the user's requirements and specifications. In component-based software, the components interact to access and provide services and functionality to each other. Currently, the emphasis of industry and researchers is on developing impressive and efficient metrics and measurement tools to analyze the interaction complexity among these components. To represent the request and the response of services among components, we have used outgoing edges and incoming edges respectively. In this paper we have defined these interactions as In-Interactions and Out-Interactions. The metrics proposed in this paper are solely based on the interactions among the components. In this work some simple methods and metrics for computing the complexity of composable components are suggested. The metrics discussed in this paper include the computation of interaction complexities as Total-Interactions of a component, Total- Interactions of component-based software, Interaction-Ratio of a component, Interaction-Ratio of component-based software, Average- Interaction among components and Interaction-Percentage of components.