Component Dependency in Object-Oriented Software

Component dependency is an important software measure.It is directly related to software understandability, maintainability,and reusabi\-lity. Two important parameters in describing componentdependency are the type of coupling between two components and the typeof the dependent component. Depending upon the different types ofcoupling and the type of the dependent components, there can bedifferent effects on component maintenance and component reuse. In thispaper, we divide dependent components into three types. We thenclassify various component dependencies and analyze their effects onmaintenance and reuse. Based on the classification, we present adependency metric and validate it on 11 open-source Java components.Our study shows that a strong correlation exists between themeasurement of the dependency of the component and the effort to reusethe component. This indicates that the classification of componentdependency and the suggested metric could be further used to representother external software quality factors.