Analysis of metrics for object-oriented program complexity

We present a new framework for analyzing the scope of metrics to evaluate complexity of object-oriented programs. In this framework, we examine in detail the metrics from the viewpoint of three key aspects in object-oriented paradigm: syntax complexity, inheritance complexity and interaction complexity. For each key aspect, we expand it to five attributes, which can be calculated qualitatively. Then, we apply our framework to conventional metrics for evaluating complexity of object-oriented programs. The metrics include the ones proposed by S.R. Chidamber and C.F. Kemerer (1991), R.C. Sharble and S.S. Cohen (1993), W. Li and S. Henry (1993), and E. Kim (1993). Finally, we present a new metric which satisfies almost all attributes of the proposed framework