Variational Object-Oriented Programming Beyond Classes and Inheritance

Purpose of the Book This book presents an approach to improve the standard object-oriented pro gramming model. The proposal is aimed at supporting a larger range of incre mental behavior variations and thus promises to be more effective in mastering the complexity of today's software. The ability of dealing with the evolutionary nature of software is one of main merits of object-oriented data abstraction and inheritance. Object-orientation allows to organize software in a structured way by separating the description of different kinds of an abstract data type into different classes and loosely connecting them by the inheritance hierarchy. Due to this separation, the soft ware becomes free of conditional logics previously needed for distinguishing between different kinds of abstractions and can thus more easily be incremen tally extended to support new kinds of abstractions. In other words, classes and inheritance are means to properly model variations of behavior related to the existence of different kinds of an abstract data type. The support for extensi bility and reuse with respect to such kind-specific behavior variations is among the main reasons for the increasing popularity of object-oriented programming in the last two decades. However, this popularity does not prevent us from questioning the real effec tiveness of current object-oriented techniques in supporting incremental vari ations. In fact, this popularity makes a critical investigation of the variations that can actually be performed incrementally even more important.

Klappentext

Variational Object-Oriented Programming Beyond Classes and Inheritance presents an approach for improving the standard object-oriented programming model. The proposal is aimed at supporting a larger range of incremental behavior variations and thus promises to be more effective in mastering the complexity of today's software. The material presented in this book is interesting to both beginners and students or professionals with an advanced knowledge of object-oriented programming: The first part of the book can be used as supplementary material for students and professionals being introduced to object-oriented programming. It provides them with a very concise description of the main concepts of object-oriented programming, which are presented from a conceptual point of view rather than related to the features of a particular object-oriented programming language. The description of the main concepts is a synthesis of considerations from several leading works in data abstraction and object-oriented technology. Parts of the book are currently used as supplementary material for teaching a graduate course on object-oriented design. The book provides experienced programmers with a conceptual view of the relationship between object-oriented programming, data abstraction, and previous programming models that promotes a deep understanding of the essence of object-oriented programming. The book presents a synthesis of both the main achievements and the main shortcomings of object-oriented programming with respect to supporting incremental programming and promoting software reuse. It illustrates the behavior variations that can be performed incrementally and those that are not supported properly; the workarounds currently used for dealing with the latter case are described. Recent developments from ongoing research in object-oriented programming are presented, showing that the problems they deal with can actually be traced to some form of context-dependent behavior. The developments considered include design patterns, subject-oriented programming, adaptive programming, reflection, open implementations, and aspect-oriented programming. Advanced students interested in language design are not only provided with a comprehensive informal description of the new model, but also with a formal model and the description of a prototype implementation of RONDO embedded into the Smalltalk-80 environment. This can serve as a basis for experimenting with new concepts or with modifications of the proposed model. The last chapter of the book is particularly beneficial to the practitioners of object technology, since it deals with issues in maintaining reusable object-oriented systems.

Inhalt

1. Incremental Variations in Object-Oriented Programming.- 2. Modeling Context-Dependent Behavior Variations.- 3. RONDO Or A Theme On Variations.- 4. A Denotational Semantics Of RONDO.- 5. Implementation Issues.- 6. RONDO At Work: Managing The Evolution Of Class Libraries.- 7. Conclusions.- References.