Measuring the complexity of component-based system architecture

This paper proposes a graph-based metric to evaluate complexity of the architecture by analyzing the dependencies between components of the system. Measuring the complexity is helpful during analyzing, testing, and maintaining the system. This measurement could direct the process of improvement and reengineering work. A complexity measure could also be used as a predictor of the effort that is needed to maintain the system. In component-based systems, functionalities are not performed within one component. Components communicate and share information in order to provide system functionalities. In our approach, to capture system architecture, we borrow Li´s model, component dependency graph (CDG).