A schematic feature class can inherit another schematic feature class. This relationship must be specified at the creation of the child schematic feature class—that is, parent-child relations cannot be configured between two schematic feature classes that already exist. A child schematic feature class cannot have a type different from its parent schematic feature class—a node schematic feature can only inherit another node schematic feature class, a link schematic feature class can only inherit another link schematic feature class, and so on.
Creating a schematic feature class as a child of another schematic feature class can save configuration time, in particular when you create schematic feature classes whose schematic features are going to be managed by custom queries. Once it's created, a child schematic feature class automatically inherits the parameters configured on its parent schematic feature class, for example, the parent schematic attributes, the custom query, and the identifier that may have been configured on the parent.
The schematic feature class created in the schematic dataset also has the exact same structure as the parent schematic feature class. So any new configuration of the parent schematic feature class also automatically impacts its children schematic feature classes. On the other hand, the configuration of a child schematic feature class can evolve in a different way than its parent—for example, attributes, custom query, and identifiers that are automatically inherited from its parent can be reconfigured at the child schematic feature class level; new attributes can also be specially configured on the child schematic feature class if they are not required on the parent.