Component Dependency in Object-Oriented Software

Component dependency is an important software measure. It is directly related to software understandability, maintainability, and reusability. Two important parameters in describing component dependency are the type of coupling between two components and the type of the dependent component. Depending upon the different types of coupling and the type of the dependent components, there can be different effects on component maintenance and component reuse. In this paper, we divide dependent components into three types. We then classify various component dependencies and analyze their effects on maintenance and reuse. Based on the classification, we present a dependency metric and validate it on 11 open-source Java components. Our study shows that a strong correlation exists between the measurement of the dependency of the component and the effort to reuse the component. This indicates that the classification of component dependency and the suggested metric could be further used to represent other external software quality factors.