A pair of coupling metrics for software networks

Complex networks are everywhere. A typical example is software network. How to measure and control coupling interactions of software components is a largely explored research problem in software network. In terms of graph theory and linear algebra, this paper investigates a pair of coupling metrics to evaluate coupling interactions between the classes of object-oriented systems. These metrics differ from the majority of existing metrics in three aspects: Taking into account the strength that one class depends on other ones, reflecting indirect coupling, and distinguishing various coupling interaction. An empirical comparison of the novel measures with one of the most widely used coupling metrics is described. Specifically, an experiment about the relationships of this pair metrics is conducted. The result shows that software complexity derived from coupling interaction could not be accurately reflected by one dimension of coupling metric for negative correlation.