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Object-Oriented Technology, A Manager's Guide by David A Taylor Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-56358-4       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 147pp       Price: £15-25

Categories:   object oriented     management

Reviewed by Eric Richards in C Vu 4-5 (Jul 1992)

After an introductory discussion on the current software crisis, accurately pointing out the shortcomings of structured programming, CASE, 4GLs, and commonly available types of database, the book introduces objects with the following graphical notation:

This illustrates that an object encapsulates both variables (data) and methods (procedures), and the only way of getting at the variables is via the methods. Software objects simulate real-world objects, and communicate via messages (implemented as calls of the method procedures).

Classes are introduced as templates for creating instances of objects. The mechanism of inheritance is shown to enable the creation of a hierarchy of superclasses and subclasses, in which special cases are readily accommodated.

classes are similar to (and often identical with) user-created data types. Such creation, known as data abstraction, enables objects to be assembled from other objects, producing another hierarchy, this time of objects.

The ability to use the same name for similar methods in many classes, allowing much simpler systems to be created than was previously possible, is called polymorphism1.

And now this review has used the entire necessary vocabulary of object- orientation. The book remarks that just ten technical terms are sufficient to discuss the entire subject-matter. What a refreshing change from the junk-mail synopses of managerial introductions to object-orientation, in which get-rich-quick evangelists offer to explain buzz-words which appear nowhere else!

The author continues to write simply but with authority on object-oriented databases, covering the support of object-oriented programs, the storage of complex information in a simple way, and intelligent databases.

The final chapters of the book explain the re-useability of object-oriented software, giving the programmer greater leverage than ever before, and the advantages of evolutionary systems over the 'waterfall' development approach.

This is a short and very well-written book. It is obviously the carefully polished outcome of a longer draft. The prose is lucid, the diagrams are clear, there are marginal summaries throughout, and the book ends with a summary of key concepts and glossary. You will not find a clearer introduction to the subject.