Title :
Decomposition of inheritance hierarchy DAGs for object-oriented software metrics
Author :
Shih, Timothy K. ; Chung, Chi-Ming ; Wang, Chun-Chia ; Pai, Wen C.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Tamkang Univ., Tamsui, Taiwan
Abstract :
Software metrics are widely used to measure software complexity and assure software quality. However, research in the field of software complexity measurement of a class hierarchy has not yet been carefully studied. The authors introduce a novel factor called unit repeated inheritance (URI) and an important method called the inheritance level technique (ILT) to realize and measure the object-oriented software complexity of a class hierarchy. The approach is based on the graph-theoretical model for measuring the hierarchical complexity in inheritance relations. The proposed metrics extraction shows that inheritance is closely related to the object-oriented software measurement and reveals that overuse of the repeated (multiple) inheritance will increase software complexity and be prone to implicit software errors
Keywords :
data structures; directed graphs; inheritance; object-oriented programming; software metrics; software quality; class hierarchy; graph-theoretical model; hierarchical complexity; implicit software errors; inheritance hierarchy directed acyclic graph decomposition; inheritance level technique; inheritance relations; metrics extraction; object-oriented software metrics; software complexity measurement; software quality assurance; unit repeated inheritance; Business; Information management; Message passing; Network-on-a-chip; Object oriented modeling; Programming; Software measurement; Software metrics; Software quality; Software systems;
Conference_Titel :
Engineering of Computer-Based Systems, 1997. Proceedings., International Conference and Workshop on
Conference_Location :
Monterey, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-7889-5
DOI :
10.1109/ECBS.1997.581870
