lotus

previous page: 1.1) What Is An Object? (Object-Oriented Technology)
  
page up: Object-Oriented Technology FAQ
  
next page: 1.4) What Is A Meta-Class? (Object-Oriented Technology)

1.2) What Is Object Encapsulation (Or Protection)? (Object-Oriented Technology)




Description

This article is from the Object-Oriented Technology FAQ, by Bob Hathaway rjh@geodesic.com with numerous contributions by others.

1.2) What Is Object Encapsulation (Or Protection)? (Object-Oriented Technology)

[Booch 91, p. 45] defines: "Encapsulation is the process of hiding all of the
details of an object that do not contribute to its essential characteristics."

[Coad 91, 1.1.2] defines: "Encapsulation (Information Hiding). A principle,
used when developing an overall program structure, that each component of a
program should encapsulate or hide a single design decision... The interface
to each module is defined in such a way as to reveal as little as possible
about its inner workings. [Oxford, 1986]"

Some languages permit arbitrary access to objects and allow methods to be
defined outside of a class as in conventional programming. Simula and
Object Pascal provide no protection for objects, meaning instance variables
may be accessed wherever visible. CLOS and Ada allow methods to be defined
outside of a class, providing functions and procedures. While both CLOS
and Ada have packages for encapsulation, CLOS's are optional while Ada's
methodology clearly specifies class-like encapsulation (Adts).

However most object-oriented languages provide a well defined interface to
their objects thru classes. C++ has a very general encapsulation/protection
mechanism with public, private and protected members. Public members (member
data and member functions) may be accessed from anywhere. A Stack's Push and
Pop methods will be public. Private members are only accessible from within
a class. A Stack's representation, such as a list or array, will usually be
private. Protected members are accessible from within a class and also from
within subclasses (also called derived classes). A Stack's representation
could be declared protected allowing subclass access. C++ also allows a
class to specify friends (other (sub)classes and functions), that can access
all members (its representation). Eiffel 3.0 allows exporting access to
specific classes.

For another example, Smalltalk's class instance variables are not accessible
from outside of their class (they are not only private, but invisible).
Smalltalk's methods are all public (can be invoked from anywhere), but a
private specifier indicates methods should not be used from outside of the
class. All Smalltalk instance variables can be accessed by subclasses,
helping with abstract classes and overriding.

Another issue is per-object or per-class protection. Per-class protection
is most common (e.g. Ada, C++, Eiffel), where class methods can access any
object of that class and not just the receiver. Methods can only access the
receiver in per-object protection. This supports a subtyping model, as any
object other than the receiver is only satisfying an abstract type interface,
whereby no method or object structure can be inferred in the general case.

1.3 What Is A Class? (Object-Oriented Technology)

A class is a general term denoting classification and also has a new meaning
in object-oriented methods. Within the OO context, a class is a specification
of structure (instance variables), behavior (methods), and inheritance
(parents, or recursive structure and behavior) for objects. As pointed out
above, classes can also specify access permissions for clients and derived
classes, visibility and member lookup resolution. This is a feature-based or
intensional definition, emphasizing a class as a descriptor/constructor of
objects (as opposed to a collection of objects, as with the more classical
extensional view, which may begin the analysis process).

Original Aristotlean classification defines a "class" as a generalization of
objects:
[Booch 91, p93]
"a group, set, or kind marked by common attributes or a common attribute; a
group division, distinction, or rating based on quality, degree of
competence, or condition".

[Booch's definition in the context of OOD]
"A class is a set of objects that share a common structure and a common
behavior." "A single object is simply an instance of a class."

The intension of a class is its semantics and its extension is its instances
[Martin 92].

[Booch 94, 4.2] proposes 3 views of classification as useful in OO analysis and
design: classical categorization (common properties), conceptual clustering
(conceptual descriptions), and prototype theory (resemblance to an exemplar).
He advocates starting with the former approach, turning to the second approach
upon unsatisfactory results, and finally the latter if the first two approaches
fail to suffice.

 

Continue to:













TOP
previous page: 1.1) What Is An Object? (Object-Oriented Technology)
  
page up: Object-Oriented Technology FAQ
  
next page: 1.4) What Is A Meta-Class? (Object-Oriented Technology)