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A Relational Model of Object Collaborations and Its Use in Reasoning About Relationships

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ECOOP 2007 – Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2007)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 4609))

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Abstract

Understanding the collaborations that arise between the instances of classes in object-oriented programs is important for the analysis, optimization, or modification of the program. Relationships have been proposed as a programming language construct to enable an explicit representation of these collaborations. This paper introduces a relational model that allows the specification of systems composed of classes and relationships. These specifications rely in particular on member interposition (facilitates the specification of relationship-dependent members of classes) and on relationship invariants (facilitate the specification of the consistency constraints imposed on object collaborations). The notion of a mathematical relation is the basis for the model. Employing relations as an abstraction of relationships, the specification of a system can be formalized using discrete mathematics. The relational model allows thus not only the specification of object collaborations but also provides a foundation to reason about these collaborations in a rigorous fashion.

This work was partially supported by the National Competence Center in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems (NCCR-MICS), a center supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant number 5005-67322.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich,  

    Stephanie Balzer & Thomas R. Gross

  2. Department of Computer Science, Purdue University,  

    Patrick Eugster

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  1. Stephanie Balzer
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  2. Thomas R. Gross
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  3. Patrick Eugster
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Erik Ernst

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Balzer, S., Gross, T.R., Eugster, P. (2007). A Relational Model of Object Collaborations and Its Use in Reasoning About Relationships. In: Ernst, E. (eds) ECOOP 2007 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4609. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73589-2_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-73589-2_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-73588-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-73589-2

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