Software Metrics: A Survey

Software metrics were defined to be a method to quantify attributes in software processes, products and projects. The software metrics area has a lack of reports about metrics usage and real applicability of those metrics. In this sense, the main goal of this paper is briefing review research in software metrics regarding source code in order to guide our research in software quality measurement. The metrics review is organized in two ages: before 1991, where the main focus was on metrics based on the complexity of the code; and after 1992, where the main focus was on metrics based on the concepts of Object Oriented (OO) systems (design and implementation). The main contribution of this work is a large overview about software code metrics that can show us the evolution in this area, and a critical analysis about the main metrics founded on the literature