Relations As Semantic Constructs In An Object Oriented Language

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Review

• Express associations and constraints among objects
• it is not possible to separate the abstraction from the implementation
• how can relations be added to OOP ?
  • complement existing concepts
  • enhance expressive power

• Association relates objects from n classes
• relations are bidirectional
• operations are applied to a relation as a whole
• Steve Jobs "works for" Apple
• An object oriented language is more expressive if relations are a primitive declarative construct.
• classes and relations abstracts the high-level static structure of the system, without having to specify a particular implementation.

Notes

• Introduction
  • What are relations
  • Object-oriented languages lack relations
  • Why relations should be a semantic construct
  • Relations can be implemented

• Relations as logical constructs
  • Definitions
  • Syntax
  • Update Operations
  • Cardinality
  • Similarities between classes and relations
  • Qualified Relations
  • Other Relations
  • Query Operations
    • Testing membership
    • Indexing by fields
    • Scanning elements

• Relations in standard object oriented languages (how it is done now)
  • Implementing relations using instance variables
  • Why adding a relation class is not enough

• Implementation of relations in an object-oriented language (proposal)
  • Syntax
  • Methods
  • Relation objects

• Possible Objections
• An Actual Implementation

References

Bibliographic Description

@inproceedings{38850,
 author = {James Rumbaugh},
 title = {Relations as semantic constructs in an object-oriented language},
 booktitle = {OOPSLA '87: Conference proceedings on Object-oriented programming systems, languages and applications},
 year = {1987},
 isbn = {0-89791-247-0},
 pages = {466--481},
 location = {Orlando, Florida, United States},
 doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/38765.38850},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 }