Reflection patterns in the context of object and component technology

coupling relies on polymorphism and dynamic binding. The abstract class or interface must declare all the relevant methods of B. Now suppose an alternative way of coupling A and B which requires a semantic convention defined separately, that is, not as part of the signature of the abstract class or interface: B is replaced by the most general class Object so that no particular signature is defined. Thus in order to invoke the methods of B1, (a) A has to be able to find out which methods are available and (b) a semantic convention has to define the meaning of the methods. We introduce the term semantic coupling when two classes are coupled by means of a semantic convention. In the example A and Object are semantically coupled (see also Figure 2.4b). For B1 this means that it does not have to extend a parChapter 2 Selected OO Reflective Architectures 67 ticular abstract class or implement an interface, but its method must adhere to the semantic convention.