9804111 This research project attempts to develop new ways to analyze and test the integration aspects of software components, particularly for object-oriented software. As more software is developed using object-based designs and object-oriented languages, the problems of integrating the components become more crucial to the success of the software. This research project addresses these integration problems through software couplings, which are the paths through which software components communicate. The project applies coupling in four related directions. (1) Develop practical, effective, formalizable, automatable techniques for testing connections between components during software integration. (2) Extend and refine traditional coupling metric definitions to handle language features of modern languages. Use couplings to develop precise measurements, and develop complete algorithms for measuring complexity based on couplings. (3) Develop algorithms for using couplings to compute how much a proposed change will affect the rest of the system. This change impact analysis is used for planning, cost estimation, and decision making. (4) Finally, use couplings to determine the amount of regression testing that needs to be done after a maintenance change is made.***
