Number Of Methods (NOM)

Overview

The Number Of Methods metric is used to calculate the average count of all class operations per class. A class must have some, but not an excessive number of operations.

This information is useful when identifying a lack of primitiveness in class operations (inhibiting re-use), and in classes which are little more than data types.

Computation

For a class, this is a simple count of the number of operations.

For a package, this is the average number of operations per class of the package.

Nominal range

Between 3 and 7.

Analysis

This value should remain between 3 and 7. This would indicate that a class has operations, but not too many. A value greater than 7 may indicate the need for further object-oriented decomposition, or that the class does not have a coherent purpose. A value of 2 or less indicates that this is not truly a class, but merely a data construction.