Toward measuring potential coupling

Coupling (W.P. Stevens et al., 1974) measures the strength of connection between two modules and is defined for modules that share data or control connections. Other types of connections are possible. Among these are sharing of types, sharing of coding standards and sharing an environment. The work presented deals with the potential coupling between a program and other modules in the environment. The importance of this type of coupling stems from its prevalence in software reuse. Potential coupling is not defined directly like the original coupling types. Instead, this work develops bounds for the sum of all coupling in the program and uses it to define the measure of design density and define potential coupling analytically