Introduction to Object Orientation

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 1
 Objectives

In this chapter we will:

 Introduce some Object Oriented concepts
 Introduce the concept of an object as an instance
of a class
 Discuss Encapsulation
 Discuss Inheritance
 Discuss Polymorphism

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 2
 What is Object Technology?

Object Technology (OT) covers:

 Object Oriented Analysis (OOA)

 Object Oriented Design (OOD)
 Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
 Object Oriented Databases (ODBMS)

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 3
 What is Object Oriented?

 The Object Oriented (OO) approach to software

development is based on a method of thinking
about the world in abstract terms
 We identify objects in the world around us in
terms of „things‟, properties of things and the
actions that things perform
 Objects are instances of a specific class
 For example you may think of Book as a class and a
specific instance of the class Book is an object
 The Object Oriented style of development takes
this approach and uses it to implement software

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 4
 Why Object Oriented?

 Modern life depends on computers

 As computers become more powerful we expect
more from them
 Software systems are very very complex not easily
understood and are becoming more so all the time
 Traditional software techniques cannot offer the
same benefits as OO in tackling these problems

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 5
 What are the problems with Software?

 Complexity
 Reliability
 Interoperability
 Maintainability
 Extendibility
 Re-Usability

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 6
 What are the Traditional techniques?

 Procedural Programming (C, Pascal, ADA etc.)

 Functional Programming (LISP, ML)
 Logic Programming (Prolog)

 Structured Analysis and Design

 SSADM
 JSP

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 7
 Why don’t they work ?

 Well, actually they do

 But at a cost !
 Most commercial software is still built using
procedural techniques
 Most modern software is BIG and very complex,
even for tasks such as word processing
 Finding and fixing design faults and bugs is time
consuming and costly
 Maintenance costs are VERY high

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 8
 How does OT help?

 Re-use of existing designs and code

 Faster development
 More Robust solutions
 Less code
 Less complexity
 Less maintenance

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 9
 What is an object?

 An object is an instance of a class

 An object has:
an identity
state and behaviour - what do computers hold?
a purpose or responsibility or role
 An object may:
provide a service for other objects (be a server)
require other objects to provide information for its own
purpose (be a client requiring a service)
 An object may send a message to another object
to request a service

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 10
 A food dispensing machine: an object

For example consider a food dispensing machine;

an example of an object
How do you use the object?
 put the coin in
 press the right button
 food appears
 press another button
 change appears
You don‟t need to know what happens behind the
scenes; as long as it does what it is supposed to
and delivers the food you are happy

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 11
 A food dispensing machine: an object

What happens if the mechanisms inside are

completely overhauled and changed?
 You don‟t care
 You only care if the interface is changed
 You care if the buttons don‟t work as you expect
 You care if the change isn‟t right

 You should think of interacting with the machine

as sending a message to the object (the machine)
 The machine is responding with a return object
(the food), resulting from an action

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 12
 A bank account

 A bank account is another example of an object;

an instance of a class
 You interact with the account by sending
messages:
 send message: obtain balance
 send message: withdraw money
 send message: deposit money
 send message: obtain interest

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 13
 A Person object

 What state and behaviour might this object have?

Identity

data State

procedures/functions Behaviour

 different ones for different purposes

 the purpose of the object is very important
 send message: age
 Date of birth and so on
Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1
Slide 14
 A Person object -State (data)

The state of a Person object may be defined by data

such as:

 name (of person, not name of object!)

 address
 age
 insurance number
 passport number

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 15
 A Person object - Some methods

 Example of state and behaviour

Person

name data
address
setName
procedures/functions
getName

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 16
 A Person object

The state may or may not be changed

Methods have to be provided to change the state
How the state is changed is hidden to any outside
objects

In the example we see two kinds of methods

one that asks for information about the state
of the object - an „object‟ (value) is returned
one that changes the state of the object –
information to change the state is passed as
an argument

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 17
 A Person belonging to an institution

 Think of the kinds of people you might find within

this institution
 What do you need to know about them?
form a hierarchy of information (data)
 Does it depend on the the
role/responsibility/purpose of the person
concerned?
 Does it depend upon the situation?

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 18
 Person - student

 A student is a specialization of a Person

 The following information may be required for a
student:
 name (from Person)
 modules s/he is taking
 address (from person)
 which year of study
 full-time or part-time

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 19
 Person - staff

 A staff member is a specialization of a Person

 The following information may be required for a
staff member:
 name (from person)
 modules s/he is teaching
 address (from person)
 when started employment
 how long in employment
 full-time or part-time

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 20
 Hierarchy of classes

PERSON

STUDENT STAFF

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 21
 Inheritance

 A Student has all the characteristics of a Person

plus a little bit more
 A Staff member has all the characteristics of a
Person plus a little bit more
 Both Student and Staff can inherit common
characteristics from Person
 Inheritance can be slightly different in different OO
languages
 we will take a simple example that is fairly standard
 A subclass of a class inherits data and methods
(procedures) from a superclass

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 22
 The ‘is-a’ Relationship

 Inheritance can be thought of as implementing the

is-a relationship
 A Student is-a Person
 A Staff member is-a Person

 Often classes can be logically related to each

other by the „is-a‟ relation
 Car is-a Vehicle
 Lorry is-a Vehicle

 The „is-a‟ relationship allows us to identify

common characteristics in a super class and
concentrate on differences in sub classes

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 23
 Inheritance

 For example: if we have already defined what a

Vehicle is, we don‟t need to define any of the
Vehicle properties in class Car; we only have to
define things that are unique to Car

 When a class (Car) is a kind of another class

(Vehicle) we can say „Car inherits from Vehicle‟

 Car inherits all the properties of Vehicle and

adds some of its own

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 24
 Inheritance Diagrams

 Inheritance relationships can be shown as

diagrams:

Vehicle
inheritance classes
triangle

Car Lorry

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 25
 The ‘has-a’ Relationship

 The „has-a‟ or „part-of‟ relationship exists between

objects when one object is a part of another
 For example a wheel is a part of a car
 a wheel is an instance of class Wheel
 a car is an instance of class Car
 The car has a set of wheels

 It is DIFFERENT from inheritance („is-a-kind-of‟)

 a wheel is not a kind of car

 Sometimes we think of the “part-of” relation as

being between classes - this is called aggregation

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 26
 Multiple Inheritance

 A class can inherit the features of several different classes

 For example Amphibious Vehicle inherits the properties of
both Land Vehicle and Water Vehicle

Water Vehicle Land Vehicle

Vehicle

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 27
 Polymorphism

 A message can invoke more than one method

 The actual method invoked depends upon the type of
object that the message is sent to
 For example the class Circle and the class Square
can both understand the “drawYourself” message
 However, they have different methods to
implement the drawing behaviour
 one draws a circle
 the other a square

 This is allowed in object-oriented languages

 This is called “polymorphism”

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 28
 Using OO and finding classes

 When building OO applications:

 First, look at existing class hierarchies and see if
any suitable classes exist to use as they are
 If no existing classes do exactly what is required
can you extend any of the classes easily to give
the application classes that you need?
 Inheritance
 If not, you need to define and build your own
classes
 Think about making your classes as generic as possible
so that they can be re-used

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 29
 Summary

In this chapter we have:

 Introduced some Object Oriented concepts
 Introduced the concept of an object as an instance
of a class
 Discussed Encapsulation
 Discussed Inheritance
 Discussed Polymorphism

Object-Oriented Analysis & Design – Module 1

Slide 30