Carmine GRAVINO | Web appendix - SEAA 2017

How the use of design patterns affects the quality of software systems: a preliminary investigation

by Carmine Gravino and Michele Risi

Abstract:

In this paper we have analyzed at the class level the quality of the software portions including classes participating in design patterns instances (DP classes) with respect to the remaining software portions (NoDP classes). To this aim, we ex- ploited some (CK) metrics proposed by Chidamber and Kemerer, which provide an indication of the quality of the software with respect to crucial properties, e.g., cohesion and coupling. The performed study is based on ten software systems from which information about design pattern instances and CK metrics were obtained by exploiting repositories of pattern instances and the tool Understand, respectively. The analysis revealed that the use of design patterns impacts on the quality of the software. Indeed, as main results we can highlight that, for the majority of the considered systems, DP classes on average have more LOCs as well as more lines of comments. Furthermore, a greater level of coupling and a low cohesion level has been found for DP classes with respect to NoDP classes, that could impact on the maintainability of the software.