jj.txt

It is difficulty to validate the relationships between internal product attributes 
and external attributes mainly because external attributes are measured with respect 
to how the product relates to its environment  and additional factors besides the product itself.

Internal product attributes like cyclomatic complexity may influence a 
system's maintainability however other issues such as variable names, comments and 
system documentation have a larger effect on the maintainability of the system.

There are so many factors that influence the external attributes of a system.The skills of the 
people doing the maintanance affects both the reliablity of the system and its maintainability.External product attributes can be measured directly only after the product has been created while 
the internal product attributes are measurable during and after a product has been created.




 



The basic difficulty arises because the external attributes such as maintainability are 
not solely dependent on a small number of 
internal product attributes; there are more factors that can affect this. 

While the complexity of a system may influence the said system's maintainability,
 other issues such as the choice of variable names, system documentation and, 
particularly, the skills of the people doing the maintenance have such a large effect on the process that 
they may underplay any maintainability differences arising from different levels of complexity in the system. 

It is important to know that the submission above does not contradict experiments where a 
relationship between maintainability and complexity is established – however, there 
is not enough evidence at the moment to generalize this.

Essentially, the relationship between internal product attributes such as cyclomatic complexity
 and external attributes such as maintainability is one that is difficult to validate because 
there are so many other factors (both tangible and non-tangible) that affect the relationship.