Abstract
Software metrics serve as a significant issue to improve software quality. It is an important research of software engineering. In line with the methodologies of object-oriented analysis and design widely developed, many software metrics techniques have been proposed. However, not many focus on the metrics evaluation of an inheritance hierarchy. In this paper, we propose a novel concept named unit repeated inheritance (URI) in Z notation to realize object-oriented software metrics. The approach describes an inheritance level technique (ILT) method as a guide to measure the software complexity of an inheritance hierarchy. The measures of inheritance metrics are formed based on the proposed mechanism. Also, we use Lex and Yacc to construct a windowing tool which is used in conjunction with a conventional C++ programming environment to assist a programmer to analyze and measure his/her C++ programs.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 541-566 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 1998 |
Keywords
- C++ programming language
- Inheritance hierarchy
- Object-oriented programming
- Software engineering
- Software metrics
- Z notation