Object Oriented Metrics-A Historical Perspective

Object oriented technology is a new approach for developing software systems to increase software quality, software flexibility and extensibility. Software quality cannot be improved unless it can be measured. Software metrics are units of measurement and are a potential tool to improve the quality of software. Software programmers need valid measures for evaluating and controlling the software projects. The concepts of software metrics are well established and many metrics relating to product quality have been developed and used. The primary Aim of this survey is to present the existing relevant work as complete as possible. The survey includes traditional software metrics that could be applied to object oriented programming and a set of object-oriented metrics. A historical perspective of object-oriented metrics guides researchers and developers on how to measure the quality characteristics of object oriented programming. The results can be used by quality engineers in selecting the proper set of metrics for their software projects. The future of software metrics lies in using, testing and enabling managers to make many kinds of predictions and assessments.