Visualization of Coupling and Programming to Interface for Object-Oriented Systems

A 3-dimensional variant of the ´polymetric views´ approach for visualising metrics within an object oriented software system is presented. This variant provides simultaneous display of several metrics including coupling, the contribution made by coupling to interface rather than to concrete class, and an indication of behavioural polymorphism. A tool, JCTIViz, is described that implements this visualisation for Java systems and preliminary results from applying the tool are presented. Future enhancements to the approach and the tool are outlined.