Mapping Software Metrics to Module Complexity: A Pattern Classification Approach (Report‪)‬

1. Introduction Software systems are used to solve or model increasingly complex problems in a variety of application domains. However, problem complexity should not manifest itself as software module complexity. That is, problem complexity should only produce software complexity as an emergent property and not as an intrinsic property of individual software modules (functions, objects, templates, and so on). Intrinsic module complexity is an undesirable characteristic that is often subjectively identified by software developers for some form of remedial action. However, this subjective process is slow, tedious, and error-prone. Automating (to some extent) this process would be desirable especially if coupled with a more rigorous quantitative approach. One possible strategy is the prediction of software module complexity using automatically generated quantitative measurements, namely software metrics [1,2].