A study on the effect of architecture on maintainability of object-oriented systems

Software development techniques have seen significant progress since the 1960s. Most research accomplishments have been in software development but not in software maintenance. This is also true for the object-oriented paradigm. We believe that the features of object-oriented approach have a significant impact on maintainability. We report an incipient study indicating that the architecture of an object-oriented system indeed affects its maintainability. This is attributed to the structure of its inheritance hierarchy, among other factors. We also attempt to provide some rationale behind this phenomenon. The possible tension between object reuse and the maintainability of its product is also discussed in the paper.