Visualising Java Coupling and Fault Proneness

Abstract

In this paper, a tool is described for visualising the Coupling Between Objects (CBO) metric for Java systems, decomposing it into coupling collaborators and using colour to denote the object-oriented mechanisms at work for each couple. The resulting visualisation is also envisaged to be useful for general program comprehension and is integrated into Java development in the Eclipse IDE. Evidence is also given that the visualisation may help detect classes tending to be less fault-prone than would be expected from inspection of their CBO values alone.