An artificial coupling is a coupling which is only there for technical reasons.

The following couplings are natural ones:

• Library depending on Book
• Stopwatch depending on Time
• Order depending on OrderItem
• OrderProxy depending on Order
• …

The following couplings are artificial:

• Time depending on Stopwatch (time should be meaningful without a stopwatch)
• OrderItem depending on Order (an order item way at least be viewed separately from the order whereas an order without any items is not an order anymore)
• Order depending on DatabaseConnection (an order which is not persisted is normally still an order, the dependency is not necessary from a conceptual point of view)
• Order depending on OrderProxy
• …

• Natural Coupling
• Artificial Class

Discuss this wiki article and the term on the corresponding talk page.