Abstract
Software architectural stability reflects the capability of software to evolve while preserving its architecture. Stability in this context means preserving cross-architectural components communications and structural relationships unchanged. It is recognised that cross-architectural components changes are costly and should be avoided. In object-oriented development, class packages form the basic architectural components of large-scale software systems. There has been a number of architecture stability metrics proposed in the literature. Those metrics mainly measure changes in cross-components structural relationships and not cross-components communication. In this study, the authors' present a new architectural stability metric that measure inter-package calls. The authors' theoretically validated ASM through a set of prominent mathematical properties. The authors' also empirically validated the metric using two open source projects: JHotDraw and abstract window toolkit. Measurements of the ASM were shown to be consistent with the lines of code changes across releases in the two projects.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 76-82 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | IET Software |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Jun 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design