Normalizing class hierarchies based on the formal concept analysis

Abstract

Class hierarchies often constitute the backbone of object-oriented software systems. Building "good" class hierarchies is a very important and common task, but such hierarchies are not so easy to build and evolve. Therefore, their construction and evolution are very important issues in component-based and object-oriented software engineering. In this paper, we present a normalized form of class hierarchy based on the concept lattice of formal concept analysis. Our approach provides the theoretical bases for the creation and evolution of well-defined object-oriented class hierarchy structures. © Springer-Verlag 2004.