Object Orientation Revealed !

Although object orientation (OO) is not intrinsically difficult, it can be hard to understand and teach unless it is viewed and presented within a coherent framework. This paper presents a logical and coherent framework for understanding and teaching object orientation. Central to the framework is the separation of the concepts generally associated with object orientation into those relating to the abstract notion of object orientation and those relating to the technologies which realise object orientation in programming languages, databases and elsewhere. This paper explains these abstract concepts and, in particular, which concrete technologies of object orientation are required to instantiate each abstract concept of object orientation. Within this framework, a number of often-misunderstood points of object orientation can be more easily understood and explained.