Daly, J. and Brooks, A. and Miller, J. and Roper, M. and Wood, M.

(1996)
An empirical study evaluating depth of inheritance on the maintainability
of object-oriented software. In: Empirical Studies of Programmers:
Sixth Workshop. Intellect, pp. 39-58. ISBN 9781567502626

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An Empirical Study Evaluating Depth of Inheritance on the
Maintainability of Object-Oriented Software
John Daly, Andrew Brooks, James Miller, Marc Roper and Murray Wood
Dept. Computer Science, University of Strathclyde,
Livingstone Tower, Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH, Scotland
(email: efocs@cs.strath.ac.uk)

ISERN-96-11

Abstract
This empirical research was undertaken as part of a multi-method programme of research to
investigate unsupported claims made of object-oriented technology. A series of subject-based
laboratory experiments, including an internal replication, tested the eect of inheritance
depth on the maintainability of object-oriented software. Subjects were timed performing
identical maintenance tasks on object-oriented software with a hierarchy of three levels of
inheritance depth and equivalent object-based software with no inheritance. This was then
replicated with more experienced subjects. In a second experiment of similar design, sub-
jects were timed performing identical maintenance tasks on object-oriented software with a
hierarchy of ve levels of inheritance depth and the equivalent object-based software.
The collected data showed that subjects maintaining object-oriented software with three
levels of inheritance depth performed the maintenance tasks signicantly quicker than those
maintaining equivalent object-based software with no inheritance. In contrast, subjects
maintaining the object-oriented software with ve levels of inheritance depth took longer,
on average, than the subjects maintaining the equivalent object-based software (although
statistical signicance was not obtained). Subjects' source code solutions and debrieng
questionnaires provided some evidence suggesting subjects began to experience diculties
with the deeper inheritance hierarchy
It is not at all obvious that object-oriented software is going to be more maintainable in
the long run. These ndings are suciently important that attempts to verify the results
should be made by independent researchers.

Daly is now with the Fraunhofer Institut (IESE), Kaiserslautern, Germany

1
1 Introduction
Object-oriented technology has become increasingly popular as a result of anecdotal evidence
and expert intuition despite various warnings about relying only on such evidence [Bur95],
[HHL90]. Evidence must be derived from a variety of empirical techniques, the data collected
being used to substantiate ndings, identify discrepancies, and act as a platform for further
investigation. Unfortunately not enough of this research is being performed | for object-
oriented technology this means little empirical evidence exists to support many of the claims
made of it. For example, Jones [Jon94] details a visible lack of empirical data to support the
assertions of substantial gains in software productivity and quality, reduction in defect potential
(the probable number of defects from all causes that will be encountered during development
and production) and improving defect removal eciency (the percentage of defects removed by
any operation, e.g., code inspection), and reuse of software components. Henry et al. [HHL90]
provide a list of references which they state have made claims having qualitative appeal, but
which have little supporting quantitative data.
In contrast, related research has reported that aggregation, dynamic binding, inheritance,
and polymorphism can introduce diculties for programmers attempting to understand, main-
tain, and test object-oriented software; see [CvM93], [Dvo94], [JKZ94], [KGH+ 94], [LMR92],
[WH92], [WMH93]. For example, Wilde and Huitt [WH92] argue that the mechanisms of inher-
itance, polymorphism, and dynamic binding are responsible for the creation of delocalised plans
| pieces of code that are conceptually related but are physically located in non-contiguous parts
of the program [SPL+ 88]. As a consequence, although it can be relatively easy to understand
most of the data structures and member functions individually, understanding their combined
functionality can be extremely dicult [KGH+ 94], [LMR92]. In addition, the use of inheritance
and polymorphism can create a large amount of dependencies that need to be considered within
an object-oriented program [KGH+ 94], [WH92]. The number of dependencies that must be
considered is far greater than in a conventional system and, as a consequence, a maintainer can
have great diculty identifying the impact of their changes [KGH+ 94].
So clearly the alleged advantages and disadvantages of the technology require substantial
empirical investigation. This realisation led to a multi-method programme of research [Dal96],
[DBM+ 95]. The programme of research began with an exploratory investigation where struc-
tured interviews were conducted, with both academics and industrialists, on their opinions of the
merits and failings of the object-oriented approach. The ndings of this primary investigation
were used to design and implement a questionnaire on key aspects of object-oriented systems
| the intention was to conrm (or otherwise) the ndings of the rst phase across a much
larger and wider practitioner group. Finally, a series of subject-based laboratory experiments

2
were conducted, including an internal replication, which tested one of the important and most
interesting outcomes of the questionnaire survey in a more controlled setting.
This paper details the design of these experiments and describes the procedures, subjects,
tasks, and materials. Statistical tests are applied to the time data collected and these are
interpreted in conjunction with an inductive analysis to explore possible explanations of the
data. Finally, threats to internal and external validity are discussed.
The collected data shows that subjects maintaining object-oriented software with three levels
of inheritance depth performed the maintenance tasks signicantly quicker than those maintain-
ing equivalent object-based software with no inheritance. In contrast, subjects maintaining the
object-oriented software with ve levels of inheritance depth took longer, on average, than the
subjects maintaining object-based software (although statistical signicance was not obtained).
Subjects' source code solutions, and debrieng questionnaires provide some evidence suggesting
subjects began to experience diculties with the deeper inheritance hierarchy.

2 Experimental justication

In the structured interview phase of the multi-method approach there was consensus amongst
object-oriented developers that inheritance depth aects a programmer's ability to understand
object-oriented software [DWB+ 95]. In the questionnaire phase, the majority of object-oriented
practitioners (55% of the 273 responses) agreed that inheritance depth is a factor when attempt-
ing to understand object-oriented software [DMB+ 95]. Of these, the largest proportion (57%)
indicated that between four and six levels of inheritance depth is where diculties begin. Since
it is well documented that program understanding is a major factor in providing eective soft-
ware maintenance and that software maintenance accounts for a large part of the total software
development budget, this is a nding that could be of major importance. To investigate the
phenomenon in a controlled manner, a series of subject-based laboratory experiments, including
a replication, were conducted in an attempt to evaluate the eect of inheritance depth on the
maintainability of object-oriented software.
Students and recent graduates were used as subjects. The use of student subjects has
been justied by Brooks [Bro80] and adopted by researchers in previous empirical studies, e.g.,
[LHKS92], [PVB95]. Drawing generalisations from their performance, however, is something that
should be carefully considered. For example, Curtis has voiced concern about the use of novice
programmers as subjects [Cur86]. On the other hand, the series of experiments was conducted
within a multi-method programme of research and it was hoped their results would conrm
the ndings of the structured interview and questionnaire phases. If conrmatory power was
achieved, any conclusions drawn would be more reliable and generalisable. Subsequent studies

3
should still seek to scale up the ndings to the maintenance of larger software systems with
professional programmers.

3 Experimental design
The experiments sought to determine if inheritance depth has an eect on the maintainability
of object-oriented software. Throughout this article the following denitions apply:
Inheritance depth: the level of a class in the hierarchy where the base class is level 1. Con-
sequently, any class is at level n if it has n , 1 superclasses. The level of the deepest leaf
class is quoted as the depth of the hierarchy.
Maintenance: modication of a software product after delivery to correct faults, to improve
performance or other attributes, or adapt the product to a changed environment [Sch87].
Maintainability: the ease with which a software system can be corrected when errors or de-
ciencies occur, and can be expanded or contracted to satisfy new requirements [Sch87].
Maintainability can be measured in a number of ways, e.g., by using complexity metrics
or even subjective evaluations by experts. For this study, in operational terms, a dierence
in maintainability is to be measured by dierences in the times it takes subjects to perform
maintenance tasks. If a software system is less or more easy to understand and modify than
another, then this dierence is expected to manifest itself as dierences in performance times.
In a controlled experiment on the impact of software structure on maintainability, Rombach
[Rom87] reports correlations between complexity measures and sta-hour eort. The times
reported here re ect a snap-shot view of maintainability, and relative maintainability could
change as the maintenance process evolves.
Regardless of program versions in the rst experiment and its internal replication, the main-
tenance task described to subjects was the same. Regarding program versions, eort was made to
ensure the maintenance tasks were suciently similar to allow meaningful comparisons. (Table
3 suggests there were no task eects arising from the two programs.) In the second experiment,
regardless of program versions, the maintenance task described to subjects was the same.
The programs used are regarded as good representatives of the solution spaces, i.e., they are
not contrived and are assumed to resemble the solutions most programmers would adopt.

3.1 Design of rst experiment

Standard signicance testing was adopted and for the rst experiment the stated null hypothesis
was:
4
 H 0,exp1 | The use of a hierarchy of 3 levels of inheritance depth does not aect the
maintainability of object-oriented programs,
to be rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis
H 1,exp1 | The use of a hierarchy of 3 levels of inheritance depth does aect the
maintainability of object-oriented programs.
Note that there is no direction specied in the alternative hypothesis | it was not predicted
whether the eect on maintainability would be positive or negative because: (i) of the varying
opinions expressed in the maintenance literature about object-oriented software and (ii) although
the depth being empirically investigated borders the range indicated most frequently by practi-
tioners in the questionnaire phase as where diculties begin to occur, it is not completely within
that range. A depth of three was chosen to provide an intermediate reference point between the
at code and the second experiment which provides a depth within the range most frequently
indicated.
To test the hypothesis a within subjects randomised block design was used | subjects were
matched on object-oriented knowledge and were then randomly allocated into one of two groups,
A or B. Group A performed a maintenance task on a program with an inheritance hierarchy
while group B performed the identical task on an equivalent version of the program without an
inheritance hierarchy (referred to from now on as the ` at' version). To counter-balance this,
the reverse was then carried out: group B performed a similar maintenance task on a second,
similar program with an inheritance hierarchy while group A maintained the equivalent at
version (Section 3.1.2 explains this design in full). Counter-balancing the groups in this manner
should have eliminated any task direction bias and subsequently any ability eect, but there
is always the possibility that counter-balancing can introduce a learning eect. The data is
examined for this eect (see Section 4.4).
This traditional experimental design provided a single independent and a single dependent
variable. The program version (inheritance or at) being maintained was the independent
variable and the dependent variable was the time taken to complete the maintenance task;
the most frequent measure of programmers' eorts on software maintenance is the time taken
[Fos91]. Data gathering (discussed in Section 3.1.5) was not limited to this dependent variable
to allow an inductive analysis to be performed (discussed in Section 4.4).
With the anticipation of around 30 subjects completing in each group, t-test power curves
[Lip90] for a two-tailed signicance level of 0:05 indicated that the experimental design had a 0:5
probability of detecting a medium-sized eect (where the dierence in means is 0:5 of a standard
deviation) and a 0:86 probability of detecting a large sized eect (where the dierence in means

5
is 0:8 of a standard deviation). With pairing, the anticipation was that these power levels would
be improved upon.

3.1.1 Procedure

The rst experiment was performed through a taught postgraduate conversion course in in-
formation technology. All of the students (see Section 3.1.2) enrolled in an object-oriented
programming class using C++ which was intensively taught over a four week period with ap-
proximately nine hours of supervised practical time every week for the rst three weeks and ve
hours in the last week. Students were taught the concepts of object encapsulation, inheritance,
message passing, and polymorphism, a working knowledge of which was required to complete the
maintenance tasks. Practical exercises were based on these concepts, with students designing
and implementing their own classes and inheritance relations and integrating these with existing
code.
Students consented to their practical work being used for research purposes and the practical
tests/experiments, constituting 60% of the nal class mark, were conducted during the nal week
of the class. For each practical test, every student was given a sheet detailing the experimental
instructions, a packet containing the maintenance task, and a second packet containing a listing
of the source code. The experimental instructions were also explained verbally at the beginning.
(The only other information given was that dierent versions of the program existed, stated to
reduce students concern about their relative performance during an individual test.)
The procedure followed for each of the two practical tests was:
1. Subjects were allowed ve minutes to read the instructions and ask questions. When this
time had passed and all subjects indicated they were happy with the instructions, they
were instructed to open packet 1.
2. Packet 1 contained the maintenance task the subjects were to attempt. Subjects were
given a further ten minutes to read the task and ask questions. Again, when this time had
passed and all subjects had indicated they were happy with the maintenance task, they
were instructed to open packet 2.
3. Packet 2 contained the experimental code listing. Once packet 2 was opened, data record-
ing began and each subject had up to 1 hour 45 minutes to complete the maintenance task
and compile and execute the code until the program output matched the required output
provided. When subjects were of the opinion that they had completed the task a monitor
checked their work. If the output was correct, data recording was terminated; if not, the
subject was asked to continue with the modication.

6
 Group Experiment 1a Experiment 1b
A Program 1 inheritance Equivalent at version
version of program 2
B Equivalent at version Program 2 inheritance
of program 1 version
Table 1: Group allocations to tasks in the rst experiment

After completing the maintenance task, subjects were asked to complete a debrieng ques-
tionnaire before leaving. The questionnaire elicited personal details, programming experience,
and impressions of the maintenance task just attempted, e.g., the overall task diculty, what
approach to the modication was taken, and what aspect caused the most diculty.

3.1.2 Subjects

Thirty one students enrolled in the object-oriented programming course, all of whom had com-
pleted a ten week class in imperative programming using Turbo Pascal. Each subject sat two
multiple choice tests (counting for the other 40% of the class mark) which assessed their object-
oriented programming knowledge gained from the class. The subjects were distributed into two
groups (16 subjects in group A and 15 subjects in group B) by matching pairs of subjects on
the results of these two multiple choice tests and then randomly assigning one to each group:
this pre-screening matching was performed to reduce subject variability across the groups.
The two groups were counter-balanced across the program versions with or without inheri-
tance as illustrated in Table 3.1.2. Allocation in this manner ensured that all subjects performed
a maintenance task to both a at program version and an inheritance program version. Sub-
jects who did not complete the task could not be included in the statistical analysis because
the nature of the study prevented subjects from continuing after the allocated time period. The
eorts made by these subjects, however, have been taken into account.

3.1.3 Maintenance tasks

There were two programs to be modied; each was designed in an object-oriented fashion and
then implemented in C++. Both programs were simple database systems which allowed records
to be created, displayed, modied, and deleted. The rst system stored information on two
types of university sta and students via the classes Lecturer, Secretary, and Student. Figure 1
displays the inheritance hierarchy for this database system. The classes Sta and Student inherit
from the Univ Community class, Lecturer and Secretary inherit from Sta, and Professor (to
be added) inherits from Lecturer. The classes Univ Community and Sta are abstract classes:
there are no instances of these classes, they merely have the abstract features common to the
7
 Univ_Community
firstName
print lastName
department

Staff Student
print print

staffId regNumber

Lecturer Secretary
print
print

annualSalary
hourlyWage

Professor
print

researchGrant
setResearchGrant

Figure 1: Inheritance hierarchy of database system for university sta and students.

specialisation classes. Instances of Lecturer, Secretary and Professor can receive the message
staId, and the member function in the super-class Sta will be executed. Member functions in
any of the subclasses can manipulate the instance variables rstName, lastName, and department
by means of the appropriate member functions in the superclass. Finally, each class overloads the
member function print to implement its own version. The second system stored information on
three types of written work via classes Book, Conference, and Thesis. The inheritance hierarchy
for this system was similar to that of the university database, as were the number of elds per
class.
Two versions of each system were used, a at and an inheritance program version. The
equivalent at program versions were created by removing all the inheritance links between the
classes in the hierarchy and adding the data members and individual member functions to each
class which had previously inherited them. Any abstract classes were then deleted, leaving a
` attened' but equivalent version of the inheritance hierarchy. The at program versions were
each about 390 lines of code (simple line count, including approximately 25 comment lines |
used to identify C++ constructs not class relationships, e.g., `lecturer constructor', `assign initial
values'). The inheritance program versions were each about 360 lines of code (approximately 35
comment lines). The inheritance depth for each system was three.
To test the hypothesis about the maintainability of object-oriented software, maintenance

8
tasks were devised which introduced new requirements (in this case, increasing the amount of
information the database could store). The subjects' task was to add a single class to their
system. A Professor class had to be added to the university system, and a Phd Thesis class to
the library system. The Professor class was to consist of seven elds, some of which are shown
in Figure 1, and was intended to be specialised from class Lecturer. The Phd Thesis class was
also to consist of seven dierent elds and was intended to be specialised from class Thesis.
These two tasks were designed to be similar. In line with common programming practices each
class was expected to have: (i) its member variables declared as private, (ii) a constructor, (iii)
a destructor, and (iv) public member functions (although the required output could be obtained
without all of these practices being adhered to). Subjects had then to create an instance of
their new class with initial and default values, modify some of these values, and then display
the object. Regardless of the program version (inheritance or at) the maintenance task was
the same.

3.1.4 Materials

Each subject was given the following experimental materials:

 a workstation (such that subjects in the same group were not sitting next to each other),
 full experimental and maintenance task instructions,
 complete source code listing of the program (paper-based and on-line), and
 test-data to determine successful task completion.
The environment used was Sun-Sparc workstations, Sun C++ compiler, and the GNU Emacs ed-
itor. The experiment was run under laboratory conditions: there was no form of communication
between the subjects. They were, however, allowed access to their class textbook [Ski92].

3.1.5 Data collection

The data was automatically collected by a highly controlled environment designed specically for
this study. Each subject was required to start a shell script which provided a workstation prompt
with their login name and the time. This script was kept running throughout the experiment
and it recorded the process the subject adopted towards the modication; this allowed the reader
of the typescript to decipher, for example, how long was spent on a particular problem.
Another shell script was introduced which, while compiling the subject's les to generate the
executable, automatically copied each le with a time stamp to a backup directory. This meant

9
the number of compilations could be calculated and also allowed examination of each subject's
solution as it was written and compiled from one stage to the next.
In summary, the data collected from conducting each experiment for any given subject was:
(i) the time to complete the task, (ii) automatic le backups, (iii) a script of the subject's
experimental procedure, (iv) the nal version of the subject's solution, and (v) answers to the
debrieng questionnaire.

3.1.6 Pilot study

A pilot study, using four academic sta, was conducted to: (i) nd introduced assumptions in
the experimental materials, (ii) nd mistakes in the experimental procedure, (iii) test that the
experimental instructions were clear, (iv) check that the tasks were of reasonable complexity,
but that they could be completed well within the allotted time, (v) ensure performance of
the automated data collection techniques, and (vi) attempt to identify any other unforeseen
circumstances.
No signicant issues were encountered during the pilot study, but subjects did require clari-
cation on several points in the instructions, e.g., two subjects mentioned that the description
of the required program output was not specic enough. The instructions were subsequently
amended to make them clearer.

3.2 Design of internal replication

An internal replication was conducted to conrm the direction of the ndings of the rst ex-
periment. It was decided to perform the replication with more experienced programmers | it
was planned and executed relatively soon after the rst experiment and before its results were
known. With the anticipation of around 15 subjects completing in each group, t-test power
curves [Lip90] for a one-tailed signicance level of 0.05 indicated that the experimental design
had a 0:4 probability of detecting a medium-sized eect and a 0:7 probability of detecting a large-
sized eect. Twenty nine subjects, a mixture of BSc. Computer Science students going into nal
(fourth) year and new graduates, volunteered to participate. All subjects were expected to be
well versed in C programming. The subjects participated in a week long intensive C++ course,
during which the internal replication using the library database system was performed. One half
of the subjects maintained the at version; the other half the inheritance version. No internal
replication was performed using the university database system because the subjects were to
participate in the second experiment which involved using a deeper inheritance hierarchy (see
Section 3.3).
Subjects were randomly allocated to two groups in the same manner as that detailed in

10
 Group Internal Replication Second Experiment
A Inheritance version Equivalent at version
of 5 level hierarchy
B Equivalent at version Inheritance version
with 5 levels
Table 2: Group allocations to tasks for the replication and second experiment

Section 3.1.2, but were blocked across their average Computer Science exam marks. The groups
were counter-balanced across program versions with or without inheritance as illustrated in Table
3.2. Allocation in this manner again ensured that all subjects performed a maintenance task to
both a at program version and an inheritance program version, i.e., those that performed with
the at program version in the replication were given the inheritance program version in the
second experiment and vice versa. The procedures, materials, and environment were the same
as they were for the rst experiment (see Section 3.1).
For the internal replication the null hypothesis was stated:
H 0,rep | The use of a hierarchy of 3 levels of inheritance depth does not aect the
maintainability of object-oriented programs,
to be rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis
H 1,rep | The results of the internal replication will be in the same direction as the
rst experiment.
The direction specied in the hypothesis indicates the results of the replication were expected
to be similar to the results of the rst experiment.

3.3 Design of second experiment

Thirty one subjects participated in the second experiment which tested the eect of a deeper
inheritance hierarchy on the maintainability of object-oriented software. (These were the same
subjects from the replication plus two students who missed it due to prior commitments.) The
procedures, materials, and environment used for the rst experiment were kept the same. With
the anticipation of around 15 subjects completing in each group, statistical power estimates were
similar to that for the internal replication.
The system used for this experiment was a larger version of the university database system
from the rst experiment (see Figure 1). The inheritance hierarchy was extended to include
more members of the university community: undergraduate student, postgraduate student,
technician, senior technician, and supervisor classes were incorporated into the software. In

11
 Univ_Community
firstName
lastName
print department
print

Staff Student
staffId print

taxableSalary regNumber

Secretary Lecturer Technician Pg_Student Ug_Student

print print print

hourlyWage annualSalary taxableSalary

Professor Senior_Technician

print print

setResearchGrant taxableSalary

Supervisor
print

taxableSalary

Director
print

office
taxableSalary

setOffice

Figure 2: Hierarchy with 5 levels of inheritance for second experiment.

addition, member functions were introduced so that wages and salaries could be calculated for
the university employees. Figure 2 displays the inheritance hierarchy for this system. Again,
two versions of the system were constructed: a at program version and an inheritance program
version. The inheritance depth for this system was 5. The inheritance program version was
approximately 800 lines of code (approximately 90 comment lines), distributed in 12 classes
(again, each class was distributed in a header and implementation le) and a main le. The at
program version, constructed in the same manner detailed in Section 3.1.3, had 3 fewer classes
(the abstract classes which were deleted), but was around 300 lines longer (approximately 80
comment lines).
The maintenance task for this more complex system was again devised to meet new require-
ments. The task involved adding a new class, Director, which was expected to be specialised

12
from class Supervisor (as detailed in Figure 2). Once more the task required member functions
to create, modify, display, and delete instances of the class. In addition, a member function had
to be written to calculate the taxable salary for Director. Each subject then had to create an
instance of their new class and send it messages to invoke actions to meet the required program
output. For the second experiment the null hypothesis was stated:
H 0,exp2 | The use of a hierarchy of 5 levels of inheritance depth does not aect the
maintainability of object-oriented programs,
to be rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis
H 1,exp2 | The use of a hierarchy of 5 levels of inheritance depth does aect the
maintainability of object-oriented programs - subjects maintaining the inheritance
program version will take longer than those subjects maintaining the at program
version.
For this hypothesis a direction was provided because the depth being empirically investigated
is within the range indicated most frequently by practitioners where diculties begin to occur
[DMB+ 95].

4 Experimental results
This section details subjects' mean completion times for the maintenance tasks and provides an
interpretation of the discovered timing trends.

4.1 First experiment

The timing data collected for the rst experiment is presented in summarised form in Table 3.
Column two gives the mean time (X time ), column three gives the standard deviation (Stime ),
columns four and ve give the minimum and maximum times, column six gives the number
of observed times (N ), and column seven gives the number of incomplete times (Inc.). Rows
one and two present the summary for the rst run using the university database system. Rows
three and four present the summary for the second run using the library database system. Note
that the average times for the inheritance and at program versions are very similar for the two
software systems which suggests that there were no task eects. (The dierence in average times
for at versus inheritance for each software system are in the same direction, although they are
not statistically signicant). In addition, rows ve and six present the grouped mean at and
inheritance times for the two runs. Examination of these times shows a mean dierence of 11.4
minutes between the total inheritance and at times.
13
 X time Stime Min. Max. N Inc.
Program 1 Flat 53.1 23.1 26 98 10 5
Program 1 Inheritance 44.1 20.6 18 92 14 2
Program 2 Flat 56.8 23.9 31 100 13 3
Program 2 Inheritance 43.5 20.4 25 102 13 2
Grouped Flat 55.2 23.1 26 100 23 8
Grouped Inheritance 43.8 20.1 18 102 27 4
Table 3: Statistical summary of the rst experiment times (minutes)

Statistical tests were then applied. Formal skewness and kurtosis tests were performed and
found several of the data distributions to be non-normal at the 95% condence interval (con-
dence intervals are provided in [BCM94]). Consequently, to be conservative, non-parametric
statistical tests were applied (although for each non-parametric test a similar result was obtained
by an alternative parametric tests). A Wilcoxon signed ranks (related) test which takes account
of the dierence (positive or negative) between paired values, i.e., the performance dierence
between a subject's time to complete the inheritance program version and the at program ver-
sion, was calculated. The statistical test, based upon the 20 subjects who completed both the
at and inheritance program versions, produced a signicant result with p = 0:05 (two-tailed,
W = 46:5; N = 19; z = ,1:95): 13 subjects performed better on the inheritance than the at,

6 did the opposite, and 1 achieved the same time for both versions (and so was discounted in
the test calculation). Thus we reject the null hypothesis H0,exp1 in favour of the alternative
hypothesis H1,exp1 .
It was of some concern that 11 subjects failed to complete at least one of the tasks within
the allotted time. It is important to note the signicant statistical result was based on paired
observations and thus did not include any of these subjects. Of these 11 subjects, one failed to
complete both program versions, 7 subjects completed an inheritance but not a at version, and
3 completed a at but not an inheritance program version. On studying the questionnaires and
subjects' source code it was found that the most common reason for incompletion was that 6 of
the those working with a at version attempted to develop a solution using inheritance. Most
students who successfully completed the task when working with the at version appeared to
use an existing class as a template. Those who attempted to introduce inheritance into the at
version had no such template within their existing code.
Combining those who did complete with those who failed to complete within time provides
a performance ratio of 20:9, i.e., approximately 2 out of 3 subjects performed better when
maintaining object-oriented software with inheritance.

14
 X time Stime Min. Max. N Inc.
Replication Flat 46.1 20.0 22 97 14 0
Replication Inheritance 35.2 17.0 14 77 13 2
Table 4: Statistical summary of the replication times (minutes)

4.2 Internal replication

The timing data collected is summarised in Table 4 in the same format used in Table 3. The
results were in the same direction as the rst experiment with a dierence in time (10.9 minutes)
between the two groups; this is similar to that of the rst experiment. Note that the average
times for the replication groups are faster than the rst experiment by 9.1 minutes for the
at program version and 8.6 minutes for the inheritance program version. This improvement
in performance is interpreted as being due to the replication subjects' greater programming
experience.
A Wilcoxon rank sum (unrelated) test was calculated for these times because, unlike the
rst experiment, there was no paired value available for comparison. The statistical result was
p = 0:07 (one-tailed, W = 151:0; n1 = 14; n2 = 13; z = ,1:51), but is arguably close enough to

the 0.05 level to provide conrmatory power for the rst experiment result. We reject the null
hypothesis H0,rep in favour of the alternative hypothesis H1,rep .
In this experiment there were 2 incompletions. Questionnaire data suggests that these 2
subjects suered signicant problems with C++ inheritance syntax.

4.3 Second experiment

Table 5 presents the collected timing data in the usual summarised form. Note that the direction
of the mean times matches the predicted direction of the hypothesis. Cross checking the mean
times from the replication and this experiment (see Tables 4 and 5) shows that while the mean
time for the at group has increased only marginally (approximately 3.5 minutes), the mean time
for the inheritance group has increased substantially (on average approximately 19.8 minutes
longer per subject). Possible reasons for this large turn around are discussed below.
A Wilcoxon rank sum test (unrelated), however, did not show signicance between these
mean times p = 0:27 (one tailed, W = 217:5; n1 = 15; n2 = 15; z = ,0:62), and hence the

X time Stime Min. Max. N Inc.

Flat 49.6 21.3 15 92 15 1
Deeper inheritance 55.0 23.9 33 115 15 0
Table 5: Statistical summary of the second experiment times (minutes)

15
null hypothesis, H0,exp2, cannot be rejected. When the null hypothesis is not rejected, it is
important to consider power levels. The design had a good chance, 0:7, of detecting a large
eect but only 0:4 of a probability of detecting a medium-sized eect. These power estimates
are further weakened by the need that arose to use non-parametric statistics. So a small to
medium-sized eect may well exist: the second experiment simply did not have the necessary
statistical power to draw conclusions one way or the other regarding the existence of a small to
medium-sized eect. On the other hand, the direction of the mean times has reversed for this
experiment. This is an important nding and worth exploring.
There was one incompletion in this experiment. The collected source code shows that this
subject attempted to reconstruct a complete inheritance hierarchy from his at code, so this
incompletion does not bias the results.

4.4 Inductive analysis and interpretation

Figure 3 displays the spread of the collected times through the use of boxplots (see [CCKT83]
for a full description). The rst two boxplots represent the times of the rst experiment for
the inheritance group (N = 27) and the at group (N = 23); boxplots three and four represent
the inheritance group (N = 13) and the at group (N = 14) times for the replication; nally,
boxplots ve and six represent the inheritance group (N = 15) and the at group (N = 15)
times for the second experiment. The boxplots show similarity between the spread of the data
in the rst experiment and the replication and also show the dierence in performance between
at and inheritance groups as the depth of the hierarchy is increased. Figure 4 demonstrates
more clearly trends in performance.
Of immediate interest is that subjects' relative performance deteriorated on the inheritance
program version with a deeper hierarchy.
So what possible interpretations can be placed on the data other than the hypothesis-related
interpretation that working with a deeper hierarchy does aect the maintainability of object-
oriented programs.
We discount program size as a predictor of performance. Despite a near trebling in size of
the at program versions between the internal replication and the second experiment, at times
were not worse on average on the second experiment. Subjects were not required to understand
or search through every line of code; rather they were required to decide which class to specialise
from or use as a copy template and they needed only to understand the code related to this
selection.
In experiment 1 and its internal replication, it has to be acknowledged that little thought was
required to decide which class to specialise from (the superclass) or to use as a copy template. In

16
 120

90

Time (minutes) 60

30

0
Inheritance Flat Inheritance Flat Inheritance Flat

Figure 3: Boxplots of completion times for the rst experiment (left), the internal replication
(centre), and the second experiment using a deeper inheritance hierarchy (right)

the second experiment, however, the at program version had 9 classes to consider, a doubling
from the rst experiment, and the inheritance program version had 12 classes to consider, again
a doubling from the rst experiment. So subjects were initially faced with a search problem
which can have been solved in either a satisfying or optimising way. This search problem was
exacerbated by the fact that subjects were not provided with a conceptual model of the domain
nor supplied with a strategy on which to base a selection of superclass or copy template.
So a possible interpretation is that experiment 1 and its internal replication simply revealed
the modiability advantage of inheritance which was then cancelled out in the second exper-
iment by the more demanding search problem generated through a greater number of classes
interconnected through the inheritance mechanisms. So it need not be depth per se that would
cause a performance deterioration: a shallow but broad inheritance hierarchy could just as easily
result in a demanding search problem.
Subjects' questionnaire responses provide evidence relating to this interpretation. Table 6
indicates the number of comments or indications received under several categories for the at
and inheritance program groups. These categories are:
1. Problems choosing superclass or class to use as copy template
2. Problems tracing in the inheritance hierarchy
3. Problems with virtual functions
4. Problems with lack of provided conceptual model

17
 60

50

Time (mins.)
40

30

20
Flat
Inheritance
0
First Experiment Replication Second Experiment

Figure 4: Average completion times for the rst experiment, the internal replication, and the
second experiment using a deeper inheritance hierarchy

5. Adopted an optimising selection strategy of `most in common'

6. Despite indicating `most in common', chose a less than optimal class
7. Adopted a satisfying strategy of `a good basis'
8. Derivation class selection time less than 5 minutes
9. Derivation class selection time between 5-10 minutes
This approach, of drawing up tables of data in order to detect common patterns of behaviour
with a view to understanding underlying processes, is called by us an inductive analysis approach
(though it may be called a qualitative analysis by others). The data in the tables may be drawn
from questionnaire data or any other measurement taken: within this paradigm it is important
to give due attention to the sorts of additional data that should be gathered over and above
the data to be used in formal statistical testing. Patterns may be detected directly from any
table drawn up or data-mining tools may be applied to the table. The emphasis of the paradigm
is on explaining what took place: this provides a check on operational denitions explicitly or
implicitly bound up in any null hypotheses.
Note that not every subject responded to every question on the questionnaires and that
some subjects are recorded more than once in Table 6 (but not more than once per category).
In the rst 4 categories of the table, 2 inheritance subjects are recorded under (1) and (4). Also
note that our estimate of inter-rater reliability would suggest that an odd comment could be
classied under a dierent category, e.g., a comment about virtual functions could be categorised

18
as a problem with tracing and a problem with tracing could be categorised as a problem with
choosing superclass.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
at 1 0 1 1 6 0 1 4 1
inheritance 4 5 4 6 7 3 1 1 7
Table 6: Frequency of comments and other indicators from questionnaires
Assuming the responses are representative, Table 6 suggests that most subjects adopted an
optimising selection strategy but that it took the inheritance program group typically at least
another 5 minutes to make the selection. Moreover, 3 subjects from the inheritance program
group settled on the wrong class despite claiming to have used an optimising strategy and 5
subjects from the inheritance program group essentially invented conceptual models of the do-
main that meant they chose not to use the superclass with most in common. In contrast to
the rst experiment and its internal replication where there was considerable (but not complete)
agreement on choice of superclass, in the second experiment, inheritance program group subjects
can be categorised into three groups: subjects inheriting from class Lecturer (2 subjects), sub-
jects inheriting from class Sta (9 subjects), and subjects inheriting from the `most in common'
class Supervisor (4 subjects). So there is a reasonably clear indication of how more demanding
the search problem was for the inheritance program group. We believe our data also supports
Dvorak's ideas on conceptual entropy [Dvo94] : all systems that are frequently changed charac-
teristically tend towards disorder, a term recognised as entropy. In object-oriented systems
\conceptual entropy is manifested by increasing conceptual inconsistency as we travel
down the hierarchy. That is, the deeper the level of the hierarchy, the greater the
probability that a subclass will not consistently extend and/or specialise the concept
of its superclass." [Dvo94].
Dvorak identied this concept through an experiment where subjects were to construct a class
hierarchy from class specications: the deeper the hierarchy got the less agreement there was
between subjects about a class's placement in the hierarchy. Essentially, a similar eect has
been found here.
But this search problem alone is not enough to explain away all the worsening in performances
for the inheritance program group.
Table 6 indicates that most subjects in the inheritance program group reported that they
suered from problems due to tracing or virtual functions. (The data for categories (2) and
(3) are for separate subjects.) These problems probably go some way toward explaining the

19
rest of the worsening in performances for the inheritance program group. As noted earlier,
one diculty that aects program understanding, and hence maintenance, is the presence of
delocalised plans, where pieces of code that are conceptually related are physically located in
non-contiguous parts of the program. According to Wilde et al., the mechanism of inheritance
creates further opportunities for delocalisation [WMH93]. One such related diculty is that
understanding a single line of code may require tracing a line of method invocations through
an inheritance hierarchy. In a shallow hierarchy this may not represent a large overhead, but
as the hierarchy becomes deeper the overhead is likely to increase. In the case of a maintainer
who wants to view the actual implementation of a method, tracing the line of invocations to its
source must be conducted. Such tracing may have aected some subjects' maintenance times.
Note that no subject from the rst experiment or its internal replication commented on
problems choosing superclass/class to use as a copy template or problems tracing through the
hierarchy.
The subject who took by far the longest time on the inheritance program group made several
tries at dierent points in the hierarchy. If this subject's datum is excluded the average time for
the inheritance program group would almost match the average time for the at program group.
We have no reason to exclude this datum: the subject's behaviour is a particularly poignant
example of conceptual entropy.
To summarise:
1. Program size is discounted as a predictor of performance.
2. The inheritance program group working with a deeper inheritance hierarchy had a more
demanding search problem when choosing a superclass but that this alone does not account
for the relative deterioration in performances.
3. Conceptual entropy will arise when programmers are forced to create their own conceptual
models of the domain or if they are given a free choice between satisfying and optimising
strategies when specialising in an inheritance hierarchy.
4. Problems with tracing and virtual functions go some way toward explaining the deterio-
rations in performances.
5. The more demanding search problem and the problems with tracing and virtual functions,
together, probably explain the general relative deterioration in performances.

20
5 Threats to validity
5.1 Threats to internal validity
A major concern within any empirical study is that an unobserved independent variable is exert-
ing control over the dependent variable(s), a possibility which must be minimised. Three such
threats have been identied: (i) selection eects, (ii) maturation eects, and (iii) instrumentation
eects.
1. Selection eects are due to natural variations in subject performance (see, e.g., [Bro80]).
An example of this is presented in [DBM+94] where the majority of `high ability' subjects
were randomly assigned to one of two groups, something which obviously biased the results
of the study. Such bias was catered for in this study by creating subject groups of equal
ability (as detailed in Sections 3.1.2 and 3.2).
2. Maturation or learning eects are caused by subjects learning as an experiment proceeds.
The threat here was that subjects would learn from the rst run and that their performance
on the second run would be biased. The data was analysed for this and no signicant eect
was found.
3. Instrumentation eects may result from dierences in the experimental materials employed.
In this study such eects were likely to arise from dierences in the presented software
systems and maintenance tasks. Although an explicit attempt was made to ensure as
much similarity as possible, such variation can be dicult to avoid. The collected timing
data for the rst experiment are very similar across the two runs; the internal replication
repeated these results. This increases condence that any such eect was minimised. In-
strumentation eects also appear minimal between the replication and second experiment
| the increase of mean time for the inheritance group would have been similar for the at
group otherwise.
So there is no evidence suggesting that these threats to internal validity have impacted on the
results of the study.

5.2 Threats to external validity

The greater the external validity, the more the results of an empirical study can be generalised
to actual software engineering practice. Three threats to external validity have been identied
which limit the ability to apply any such generalisation: (i) subject representativeness, (ii) the
size of the software systems used, and (iii) maintenance is a process, and only the implementation
phase of the process has been considered in these experiments.
21
 1. The subjects who participated in the experiments may not be representative of software
professionals. Although the participants in the replication and second experiment were
a mixture of nal year students and new graduate computer scientists and were classed
as more experienced programmers, they cannot be categorised as experienced software
professionals. For pragmatic considerations, having students as subjects was the only
viable option for the laboratory-based experiments.
2. The software systems used for the experiments were not large and may not be represen-
tative of real software systems. The inheritance depth used in these software systems is
representative of real inheritance hierarchies, however | see the characteristics of object-
oriented class hierarchies presented in [CK94]. Furthermore, it may be that to control and
isolate the eect of inheritance on the maintainability of object-oriented software, small
systems are required otherwise the eect may become too dicult to detect. As noted by
Tiller, more control exerted over an experiment is gained only at the expense of its realism
[Til91] | an attempt to achieve as ne a balance as possible was made.
3. Although maintainability of software is best evaluated with respect to the entire main-
tenance process, laboratory-based experimentation on such a scale is not practical; this
study has concentrated on the implementation phase of the maintenance process.
The rst and second threats to external validity are common to many reported empirical studies,
e.g., [HHL90], [LHKS92], [PVB95]. It is argued there is justication to conclude that because
the eect of inheritance has been consistently reported across the multi-method programme of
research [Dal96], there is less of a threat to external validity. To fully overcome these threats a
replication package is proposed as further work in order to allow other researchers to conduct
external replications using dierent subjects, variables, and procedures (see [Cha88] for a detailed
discussion about making generalisations).

6 Conclusions
This empirical study should be of interest to those designing and maintaining object-oriented
software. The results suggest that when it is obvious which class should be used to specialise
from and when little tracing up through hierarchies is demanded, then inheritance provides
gains in modiability, i.e., object-oriented software is more maintainable than equivalent object-
based software. On the contrary, when conceptual entropy exists (when either the conceptual
model of the domain has not been not provided or other strategies for specialising have not
been specied, e.g., `most in common') and when tracing up through hierarchies is required for

22
sound comprehension, then modiability gains are cancelled out, i.e., object-oriented software is
no more maintainable than object-based software. One of our subjects provided a particularly
poignant example of conceptual entropy by attempting specialisations at several points in the
hierarchy.
An interpretation based solely on our experimental hypotheses would be misleading. Deterio-
rating performances were not simply down to depth and increased tracing diculties: conceptual
entropy also played a part and one could imagine shallow and broad hierarchies suering from
conceptual entropy as much as narrow and deep. So the inductive analysis was a vital component
of our research.
While threats to the external validity have been identied, it is argued that because the
results have been conrmed across a multi-method programme of research, these threats are
reduced. Subsequent experimentation, however, should make use of larger software systems
using professional programmers as subjects. Such experimentation might also consider other
categories of maintenance and other aspects of the overall maintenance process. It is not at all
obvious that object-oriented software is going to be more maintainable in the long run.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the eorts of those who participated in the experiments.
Thanks are extended to Pete Hendry and Dave Lloyd for their technical assistance.

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