Software complexity metrics have been studied in the procedural paradigm as a quantitative
means of assessing the software development process as well as the quality of software
products. Several studies have validated that various metrics are useful indicators of
maintenance effort in the procedural paradigm. However, software complexity metrics have
rarely been studied in the object oriented paradigm. Very few complexity metrics have been
proposed to measure object oriented systems, and the proposed ones have not been validated.
This research concentrates on several object oriented software complexity metrics and the
validation of these metrics with maintenance effort in two commercial systems. The results
of an empirical study of the maintenance activities in the two commercial systems are also
described. A metric instrumentation in an object oriented software development fratnework
is presented.
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