Number of Children
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Number of Children
The NOC is the number of immediate sub-classes subordinated to a class in the class hierarchy. It has been introduced by Chidamber and Kemerer[1].
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Theoretical basis
NOC relates to the notion of scope of properties. It is a measure of how many sub-classes are going to inherit the methods of the parent class.
Viewpoints
- Greater the number of children, greater the reuse, since inheritance is a form of reuse.
- Greater the number of children, the greater the likelihood of improper abstraction of the parent class. If a class has a large number of children, it may be a case of misuse of sub-classing.
- The number of children gives an idea of the potential influence a class has on the design. If a class has a large number of children, it may require more testing of the methods in that class.
See also
Papers:
- Original paper from Chidamber and Kemerer : A_Metrics_Suite_for_Object_Oriented_Design
- Subramaniam et al. compared it to other metrics in some contexts: Empirical Study of CK metrics for object-oriented design complexity: Implications for software defects
