Measuring object-oriented design is a research topic with some tradition. There exist different approaches for capturing design quality, like Design Patterns, Design Smells or Design Principles. Design Principles (e.g. Single Responsibility Principle, Open-Closed Principle, Information Hiding Principle, Don?t Repeat Yourself Principle) are well discussed and adhering to design principles seems to be a good idea to guide designers and deveopers and to enhance the internal software qualty. Currently there is no common understanding how to measure the adherence of software to these design principles. Although there is some related work available that tries to identify and use rough indicators (typically based on metrics) for design principles, there is not yet a comprehensive approach available that allows to guide improvements in object-oriented design driven by measurments of the source code.
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