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Measuring how well software component can be reused and maintained helps programmers not only write reusable and maintainable software, but also identifies reusable or maintainable components. We develop an automated measurement tool, JamTool, for object-oriented software system and describe how this tool can guide a programmer through measuring internal characteristics of a program for software reuse and maintenance.
In this research, primitive but comprehensive metrics for object-oriented language are extensively studied and statistically analyzed to show internal characteristics from classes selected from various applications. Also, the automatically identified connected unit, reusable unit, and maintainable unit are discussed.
We demonstrate JamTool’s ability through case studies. The first case study investigates whether JamTool can be used to assess the reusability on the evolution of an open software system. The second case study investigates whether JamTool can be used to capture the difference between two consecutive versions on the evolution of the open software system. The third case study investigates whether the metrics defined and implemented in JamTool are related to each other.