Software complexity measurement based on complex network

Abstract

Usually the complexity metric of software focuses on the complexity of code level, function level or structure level separately. It lacks of measurement for the comprehensive complexity of software system. This paper proposes a complexity metric model of three-level cascade network that based on complex network theory. In this metric model, the complexity of code level, function level and structure level are measured and the cascaded relationship between the three levels are analyzed. At last, the three-level cascade network model is built and the comprehensive complexity of software system is measured though the three-level cascade network model. The experiment result shows that the comprehensive complexity of the software system is correlated positively to the number of software defects.