A Structural Complexity Measure for UML Class Diagrams

UML class diagrams constitute a key artifact in the conceptual modeling phase and their quality can have a significant impact on the quality of the system. The structural complexity measure is one of the most important measures to evaluate the quality of a UML class diagram. This paper uses weighted class dependence graphs to represent a given class diagrams, and then presents a structure complexity measure for the UML class diagrams based on entropy distance. It considers complexity of both classes and relationships between the classes, and presents rules for transforming complexity value of classes and different kinds of relations into a weighted class dependence graphs. This method of measure has many good properties; therefore it can measure the structure complexity of class diagrams objectively.