The Design of Eiffel Programs: Quantitative Evaluation Using the MOOD Metrics

The main mechanisms of the Object-Oriented paradigm are supposed to help produce better and cheaper software. As with other things, their usage is more or less intensive, depending mostly on the designer knowledge, experience and ability. This paper reviews a set of metrics called MOOD, suited for evaluating the use of those mechanisms. A MOOD-to-Eiffel binding is introduced. Some code fragments are presented to illustrate the concepts and to clarify the measurement process. A sample of Eiffel libraries is used to collect these metrics. Statistical analysis is performed on the sample and some hypotheses are drawn and discussed. Some preliminary heuristics that can be used during the design process are then derived. Those heuristics can be of some help to designers, mainly if embedded in CASE tools.