An inheritance flow model for class hierarchy analysis

Abstract

This paper presents an inheritance flow model, which represents the inheritance relationships among classes as a flow graph. A flow operation is associated with each attribute and method in a class to denote the defined (redefined) or inherited member. An inherited member can be deemed as being handled by a sequence of how operations along a path in the flow graph. This model provides several analyses in a class hierarchy, such as implicit inherited member and polymorphic method invocation. These analyses may be applied in various fields of software engineering, such as static analysis, maintenance, and complexity measurement. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.