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6. Complexity Analysis
Using software metrics like complexity analysis will guide you towards maintainable and
testable pieces of code by reducing the complexity and splitting the code into smaller
chunks.
6.1. Halstead Metric
6.1.1 Calculation
First we need to compute the following numbers, given the program:
• n1 = the number of distinct operators
• n2 = the number of distinct operands
• N1 = the total number of operators
• N2 = the total number of operands
From these numbers, five measures can be calculated:
• Program length:
• Program vocabulary:
• Volume:
• Difficulty :
• Effort:
The difficulty measure D is related to the difficulty of the program to write or understand,
e.g. when doing code review.
The volume measure V describes the size of the implementation of an algorithm.
PL/SQL Coding Guidelines 45