Measuring Cohesion of Software Systems Using Weighted Directed Complex Networks

Jie Zhang, Jiajing Wu, Yongxiang Xia, Fanghua Ye

Abstract: Network theory has been demonstrated as an effective approach for better understanding and analysis of software systems from a systematic perspective. In this paper, we develop a directed and weighted software dependency network model to analyse software systems from a complex network perspective. In particular, to measure the "High Cohesion and Low Coupling" nature of object-oriented software systems, we propose to use a directed and weighted modularity index, which can better reflect the cohesion of software systems. Experiments are conducted on a series of open source object-oriented software systems with various scales, and the results show that the directed and weighted modularity can better characterize software systems with different cohesion.