On the notion of inheritance

Taivalsaari, Antero

doi:10.1145/243439.243441

Cited by 205 publications

(108 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…The components are not independent and, thus, not maintainable and usable individually. In addition, subclassing combines the concepts of subtyping and inheritance which is discussed very controversially [19,20]. While subtyping expresses that objects of a subtype can be used wherever their supertype is expected (i.e., in references defined between the types), inheritance describes that concrete features (i.e., attributes, references and operations) defined by an (abstract) superclass are propagated to all subclasses.…”

Section: Extending Abstract Syntax Metamodelling By Role Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Role-Based Approach towards Modular Language Engineering

Wende

Thieme

Zschaler

2010

Software Language Engineering

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Abstract. Modularisation can reduce the effort in designing and maintaining language specifications. Existing approaches to language modularisation are typically either focused on language syntax or on language semantics. In this paper, we propose a modularisation approach covering both syntax and semantics. We propose defining composition rules on the level of abstract syntax, making it the central artefact in a language module. To enable clean interfaces for such language modules-effectively making them language components-we use rolemodelling at the metamodel level. We discuss how role-based metamodelling supports the aspectual modularisation of language semantics and can also be integrated with concrete syntax specifications to build self-contained language components. We present the implementation of our approach in the LanGems language compositions system and show how it can be used to provide a modularised definition of the Object Constraint Language.

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Section: Extending Abstract Syntax Metamodelling By Role Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Role-Based Approach towards Modular Language Engineering

Wende

Thieme

Zschaler

2010

Software Language Engineering

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“…However, there exists many models of inheritance and the correct application of any model is debatable [2,26]. The formal definition of inheritance is characterised as follows [4,31]:…”

Section: Properties Inheritance Schemementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the inheritance scheme of properties from parent class to child class is open to many interpretations. Taivalsaari [31] explained that P represents the properties inherited from an existing object or class where, in fact, C is able to inherit from many classes either in the same descendant branch or multiple branches if in a multiple-inheritance situation. It is generally accepted that the deeper a class is in a hierarchy, the more difficult the control of inheritance becomes.…”

Section: Properties Inheritance Schemementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The inheritance mechanism is one of the key points for the extendibility and reusability aspects of object-oriented (OO) systems [3,8,12,13,17,26,27,28,31]. Due to the inherent incremental development of a class hierarchy, it is important to consider the future additions of new classes [18,29,30] as they will influence the shape and structure of the hierarchy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Due to the inherent incremental development of a class hierarchy, it is important to consider the future additions of new classes [18,29,30] as they will influence the shape and structure of the hierarchy. Recently, a variety of models of inheritance have been well described by Taivalsaari [31]. Although they offer a vast extent of expressiveness, each of these mechanisms are still subject to conceptual design inconsistencies [2,8,12,29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing Inheritance for the Multiple Descendant Redefinition Problem in OO Systems

1998

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Current use of inheritance has illustrated that the introduction of conceptual inconsistencies is possible in a class hierarchy. This paper discusses the reasons why complete method redefinition infringes the essence of inheritance. A redefinition metric set is proposed and practical experiments demonstrate that the results obtained permit the detection of inheritance design problems. Appropriate design decisions are suggested.

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Construction of robust class hierarchies

Frick

Goos

Neumann

et al. 2000

Softw: Pract. Exper.

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This article discusses the problem of constructing robust class libraries. Further design criteria include the flexibility of class libraries, the efficiency of the implementations, and their safe extensibility. We show that it is possible to design robust libraries to satisfy any two of the requirements at the same time. Although the solution may require an exponential growth in the number of classes compared to the original design, this apparent class explosion can be controlled by generating only the necessary additional classes automatically. As an application demonstrating both the theoretical problems and the power of our generator approach, the design of a library modelling data structures and algorithms for graphs is considered. Both the discussion and the results in this article generalize to other domains. A. FRICK ET AL.with components a 1 , . . . , a n where a i contains a value of type T i if T i is a basic type, and a reference to an object of type T i otherwise. The state of an object o comprises the values and references of its components, together with the states of the referenced objects. If x : T is an attribute and T is a type with attribute y : T , then x.y denotes the reference or value denoted by the y-attribute of T of the object referenced by x. This notation is extended inductively in the straightforward way. The operation #A creates a new object and returns a reference to it. The equality of objects is based on their reference, i.e. on object identities. However, sometimes structural equality is used. This notion is based on the fact that objects can be viewed as vertices of a directed graph and references as edges (e.g. see Schmidt and Zimmermann [9,10]). Two objects are structurally equal iff their directed graphs are isomorphic.The interface of a method declares the signature with its parameters. m(x 1 : T 1 , . . . , x k : T k ) : T denotes a method m with signature m : T 1 × · · · × T k → T , where parameter x i is a variable of type T i , i = 1, . . . , k. T = VOID iff m is a procedure. Methods may have an implementation in a particular programming language. In our case, we also consider methods without implementations. These methods are called abstract. An abstract class is a class that contains abstract methods. Classes without abstract methods are called implementation classes. In our article, abstract classes are denoted by the keyword abstract.In our examples, we use the language SATHER-K [11] for implementing methods. We just use the usual control structures of while-loops, for-loops, and conditionals with their usual semantics ‡ . The lhs := rhs operator denotes an assignment. It means that if lhs is an object of a basic type, then the value denoted by rhs will be the content of lhs. Otherwise, rhs denotes a reference to an object which is copied to lhs. Within the implementation of a function, res denotes the value/reference to be returned.

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On the notion of inheritance

Cited by 205 publications

References 78 publications

A Role-Based Approach towards Modular Language Engineering

A Role-Based Approach towards Modular Language Engineering

Assessing Inheritance for the Multiple Descendant Redefinition Problem in OO Systems

Construction of robust class hierarchies

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