Coupling and Decoupling

Definition

Coupling is a measure of dependence between components of software system.

De-coupling is a design or re-engineering activity aiming to reduce coupling between system elements.

Key Points

Coupling of system components refers to a measure of dependency among them. Coupled components might depend on each other in different ways. Some examples of the dependencies are:

• One component might depend on syntax, format, or encoding of data produced by another component.

• One component might depend on the execution time within another component.

• One component might depend on state of another component.

Notion of coupling is connected to notion of cohesion. Cohesion is a measure of how related and focused are responsibilities of a software component. For example a highly cohesive component might group responsibilities

• Using the same syntax, format or encoding of data.

• Performed at the same time.

• Executed in the same state.

Highly cohesive components lead to fewer dependencies between...