Exploring the Relationship between UML Design Metrics for Web Applications and Maintainability

The size and complexity of web applications is increasing at an extremely rapid rate. Many web applications have evolved from simple HTML pages to complex serviceoriented applications that have high maintenance costs. UML web design metrics are used to gauge whether the maintainability cost of the system can be controlled by correlating the UML design metrics to different measures of maintainability. This research empirically explores the relationships between existing UML design metrics based on Conallen’s extension for web applications and maintenance effort. This research is evaluated, through an empirical case study of an industrial web application from the telecommunications domain.