A reusability measurement framework and tool for Ada 95

Abstract

This paper presents a framework which analyzes and measures the reusability of object-oriented (00) designs. Our approach relies on reuse-specific subjective characterizations of packages and hierarchical libraries, and on a set of metrics that objectively measures the dependencies among packages based on those characterizations. We have developed a prototype tool which can parse Ada 95 applications, measure their reuse potential according to our framework, and automatically advise software designers/developers on the ways to improve their products’ reusability. We intend to incorporate this tool into a design/development environment to promote an iterative process that evolves design/code to a more reusable state.