Entropy metrics for software design evaluation

Several metrics for the quality assessment of a software system design are discussed. The metrics are based on the entropy function of communication information theory. The design of software systems is viewed as a trade-off between the information contained within a subsystem and the information shared among the subsystems of a given system. Since information can be shared in different ways by different system designs, we can compute the excess entropy and thereby rank different design alternatives. Consequently, the quality improvement due to reconfigurations can be determined by calculating the excess entropies for each reconfiguration.

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