An Evaluation of Coupling Metrics for Aspect-Oriented Software

Coupling is an internal software attribute that can be used to indicate the degree of system interdependence among the components of a software. Coupling is thought to be a desirable goal in software construction, leading to better values for maintainability, reusability and reliability. Although several coupling frameworks and coupling metrics have been proposed for aspect-oriented software, the tool support and empirical evaluation of these metrics are still being missed. In this paper we present our evaluation for a coupling metrics suite for aspect-oriented software. To do so, we first select a set of coupling metrics which consists of 16 coupling metrics for aspect-oriented software. We then develop a coupling metric tool to calculate these metrics for evaluation. Finally we evaluate these metrics by means of correlation analysis between coupling metrics and external attributes.