Design of a Component Interface Complexity Measurement Tool for Component-Based Systems

Abstract

Component-based systems encompass software systems that are built by assembling different components procured from different sources. These components work together in a component assembly to achieve the defined task. The component interfaces are the only means for determining the complexity of the component, when the source code is not available. The complexities of the interfaces of these components depend on the structures of the interfaces, the constraints that are imposed and the interactions of these components through their interfaces. As such, the complexities of these components can be measured by way of their interfaces, at an early stage of the system design phase. Traditional complexity metrics are not capable of capturing all the essential characteristics of component-based systems. Therefore, new metrics suitable for component-based development have been proposed in the literature. This paper proposes an upgraded version of a tool, which was developed and is capable of extracting structural complexity metrics for component interfaces directly from Unified Modeling Language design specifications. The tool measures three essential characteristics of a component-based system, e.g. interfaces, constraints and interactions, which are the primary contributors to the complexity of component-based systems. We demonstrate the extraction of structural complexity metrics through a case study of a University Case Registration System.