Analysis of the correlation between class stability and maintainability

Abstract

It is assumed that stability and maintainability are relating to each other. We attempt to verify and validate this assumption in object-oriented paradigm. Two candidate metrics were chosen, one for stability and one for maintainability. CSM is used in stability due to its high accuracy and wide coverage. MI was chosen for maintainability due to its clarity, ease of use and solely based on source code. The experiment shows that there is fluctuation in the correlation behavior between these two metrics and a direct causality cannot be concluded. However, in-depth analysis and through tracing of all the steps of these experiments reveal promising results. These observations can aid researchers to measure the correlation between CSM and MI correctly.