Software Engineering, 10th Edition

20.1 System complexity

I suggested in the introduction that the engineering problems that arise when constructing systems of software systems are due to the inherent complexity of these systems. In this section, I explain the basis of system complexity and discuss the different types of complexity that arise in software SoS.

All systems are composed of parts (elements) with relationships between these elements of the system. For example, the parts of a program may be objects, and the parts of each object may be constants, variables, and methods. Examples of relationships include “calls” (method A calls method B), “inherits-from” (object X inherits the methods and attributes of object Y), and “part of   ” (method A is part of object X).

The complexity ...