Encapsulation theory fundamentals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theory of encapsulation based on potential structural complexity, analyzing how encapsulation affects dependencies in software systems to better understand information hiding.

Contribution

It establishes a formal relationship between encapsulation and information hiding using potential structural complexity as a measure.

Findings

P.S.C. varies with encapsulation configurations

Encapsulation reduces maximum source code dependencies

Theoretical framework for analyzing software modularity

Abstract

This paper proposes a theory of encapsulation, establishing a relationship between encapsulation and information hiding through the concept of potential structural complexity (P.S.C.), the maximum possible number of source code dependencies that can exist between program units in a software system. The P.S.C. of various, simple systems is examined in an attempt to demonstrate how P.S.C. changes as program units are encapsulated among different configurations of subsystems.