Object-Oriented Architecture Measures

Early elimination of poor design architecture allows software to be constructed that is more extendible, flexible, maintainable, and thus less expensive. Currently, there exist few object-oriented design architecture measures to aid in this task. Many contemporary objectoriented software measures fail to address the intrinsic components of the object-oriented paradigm: hierarchy, inheritance, identity, polymorphism, and encapsulation. By focusing upon the intrinsic components of the objectoriented paradigm, it is hoped a better set of measurements can be created which help to distinguish between those architectures that follow object-oriented principles and those that do not. This research proposes four new software measures that attempt to measure the strength of these intrinsic concepts in an object-oriented design. These measurements are derived from available principles of object-oriented design which are relatively new to research.