A study of the influence of coverage on the relationship between static and dynamic coupling metrics

This paper examines the relationship between the static coupling between objects (CBO) metric and some of its dynamic counterparts. The dimensions of the relationship for Java programs are investigated, and the influence of instruction coverage on this relationship is measured. An empirical evaluation of 14 Java programs taken from the SPEC JVM98 and the JOlden benchmark suites is conducted using the static CBO metric, six dynamic metrics and instruction coverage data. The results presented here confirm preliminary studies indicating the independence of static and dynamic coupling metrics, but point to a strong influence of coverage on the relationship. Based on this, this paper suggests that dynamic coupling metrics might be better interpreted in the context of coverage measures, rather than as stand-alone software metrics.