Rule-based approach to computing module cohesion

• Published in: Proceedings of 1993 15th International Conference on Software Engineering pp. 35 - 44
• Main Author: Lakhotia, A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE Comput. Soc. Press 1993
• Subjects: Laboratories; Maintenance; Marine vehicles; Process design; Software quality; Software systems; Software testing
• ISBN: 9780818637001; 0818637005
• ISSN: 0270-5257
• DOI: 10.1109/ICSE.1993.346057

Stevens, Myers, and Constantine introduced the notion of cohesion, an ordinal scale of seven levels that describes the degree to which the actions performed by a module contribute to a unified function (1974). They provided rules, termed as associative principles to examine the relationships between processing elements of a module and designate a cohesion level to it. Stevens et al., however, did not give a precise definition for the term processing element. The author interprets the output variables of a module as its processing elements. Stevens et al.'s associative principles are transformed to relate the output variables based on their data and control dependence relationships. What results is a rule-based approach to computing cohesion. Experimental results show that, but for temporal cohesion, the cohesion associated to a module under this reinterpretation and that due to the original definitions are identical for all examples.< >