A Survey of Object-Oriented Concepts

Abstract

The object-oriented paradigm has gained popularity in various guises not only in programming languages, but in user interfaces, operating systems, databases, and other areas. We argue that the fundamental object-oriented concept is en apsulation, and that all object-oriented mechanisms and approaches exploit this idea to various ends. We introduce the most important of these mechanisms as they are manifested in existing object-oriented systems, and we discuss their relevance i the context of modern application development. *.In Object-Oriented Concepts, Databases and Applications , ed. W. Kim and F. Lochovsky, pp. 3-21, ACM Press and AddisonWesley, 1989. †.Author’s address: Centre Universitaire d’Informatique, 24 rue Général Dufour, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland. E-mail: oscar@cui.unige.ch. Tel: +41 (22) 705.7664. Fax: +41 (22) 320.2927.