A new approach to factorization - introducing metrics

In the context of object-oriented component development, software quality criteria are increasingly relevant. This proposal introduces software metrics based on a qualitative factorization criterion. Our approach takes into account the notion of a generic feature, which is a set of features that are semantically connected and partially ordered by specialization. These metrics help designers to evaluate the quality of a hierarchy H in reference to another maximally factorized organization of H by construction of the Galois sub-hierarchy associated with H. We present and discuss our preliminary experimental results. This work is part of MACAO (Mode´lisation et Audit de Composants A Objets), a joint project of France Telecom, SOFTEAM and LIRMM (Laboratoire d´Informatique, de Robotique et de Microe´lectronique), supported by the French Department of Research and Industry (RNTL)