On Validating Class Level Cognitive Metrics

The interest in the application of cognitive science in computing has grown recently to a greater extend in the software industry. The programmers and project managers are focusing on better techniques for reduction of software complexity in software development. Object oriented technology becomes an increasingly popular software development environment. The traditional software complexity measures focus only on addressing the complexity of the procedure oriented software development. They cannot fulfill the requirements of object-oriented software. Hence, newer techniques and methods are to be developed by researchers. Earlier, Arockiam et. al have proposed a new complexity measure namely Extended Weighted Class Complexity (EWCC) which is an extension of Weighted Class Complexity (WCC). EWCC is the sum of cognitive weights of attributes and methods of the class and that of the classes derived. The aim of this paper is to validate EWCC and other complexity metrics with respect to program comprehension. From the experiments conducted, it is proved that EWCC is a better indicator of complexity of classes with inheritance.