摘要：Inheritance is a powerful mechanism in Object-Oriented (OO) programming. This
mechanism supports the class hierarchy design and captures the IS-A relationship between a super
class and its subclass. Several OO metrics have been proposed and their reviews are available in the
literature. Among the various measurements of OO characteristics, this paper focuses on the metrics of
class inheritance hierarchies. In this paper first a class inheritance metric DITC (Depth of Inheritance
Tree of a Class) metric based on finding the depth of inheritance tree of a class (DITC) metric for class
inheritance hierarchy in terms of sum of the attributes (private, protected, public and inherited) and
methods (private, protected, public and inherited) at each level is proposed, then an analytical
evaluation of DITC metric against Weyuker¡¯s axioms [18] is given in discussion part and then attempt
has been made to define an empirical relation between development time with respect to its
dependence on classes in class inheritance hierarchy at each level. Attempt has also been made to
analyze the various dependencies of development time of class in class inheritance hierarchy at each
level upon its different class inheritance metric values. Data for several class inheritance hierarchies
has been collected from various resources [23].
关键词：Object-Oriented Design, Classes, Class Inheritance Hierarchy, Cohesion, Object-Oriented Metrics, Class
Inheritance Metrics.
