Another metric suite for object-oriented programming

Abstract

Chidamber and Kemerer (C&K) proposed six metrics for object-oriented programming. Discussions about the metrics were also reported. Recently, Kitchenham and her colleagues proposed a framework to validate software metrics. This paper evaluates C&K metrics by using Kitchenham's metric-evaluation framework and finds deficiencies in some of the C&K metrics. In order to remedy the deficiencies, this paper proposes another metric suite for object-oriented programming. The new metric suite, also six in number, includes Number of Ancestor Classes (NAC), Number of Local Methods (NLM), Class Method Complexity (CMC), Number of Descendent Classes (NDC), Coupling Through Abstract Data Type (CTA), and Coupling Through Message Passing (CTM). © 1998 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.